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BY JACOB ABBOTT. 



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NEW YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

8 2 CLIFF STREET 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand 
eight hundred and forty -nine, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
of New York. 



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PREFACE. 



It is the object of this series of histories to 
present a clear, distinct, and connected narra- 
tive of the lives of those great personages who 
have in various ages of the world made them- 
selves celebrated as leaders among mankind, 
and, by the part they have taken in the public 
affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest 

iluence on the history of the human race. 
The end which the author has had in view is 

/ofold: first, to communicate such informa- 
tion in respect to the subjects of his narratives 
as is important for the general reader to possess ; 
and, secondly, to draw such moral lessons from 
the events described and the characters deline- 
ated as they may legitimately teach to the peo- 
ple of the present age. Though written in a 
direct and simple style, they are intended for, 
and addressed to, minds possessed of some con- 



viii Preface. 

siderable degree of maturity, for such minds 
only can fully appreciate the character and ac- 
tion which exhibits itself, as nearly all that is 
described in these volumes does, in close com- 
bination with the conduct and policy of govern- 
ments, and the great events of international 
history. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. MARIUS AND SYLLA 13 

ii. c^sar's early years 35 

III. ADVANCEMENT TO THE CONSULSHIP 58 

IV. THE CONQUEST OF GAUL 82 

V. POMPEY 107 

VI. CROSSING THE RUBICON „. 129 

VII. THE BATTLE OF PHARSALIA 154 

VIII. FLIGHT AND DEATH OF POMPEY „ . 171 

IX. CJESAR IN EGYPT- „ . 193 

X. CiESAR IMPERATOR 213 

XI. THE CONSPIRACY 235 

XII. THE ASSASSINATION. 255 



ENGRAVINGS. 



THE PIRATES AT ANCHOR Frontispiece. 

map of rome To face Title. 

roman plebeians 18 

a roman forum 39 

the landing in england 103 

crossing the rubicon 140 

roman standard bearers 165 

death of pompey 191 

pompey's pillar 199 

Cleopatra's barge 210 

the elephants made torch bearers 226 

pompey's statue 267 

burning of ciesar's body 276 



JULIUS CJ1SAR. 

Chapter I. 
Marius and Sylla. 



The three great European nations of antiquity. Alexander. 

FT1HERE were three great European nations 
-*- in ancient days, each of which furnished 
history with a hero : the Greeks, the Cartha- 
ginians, and the Romans. 

Alexander was the hero of the Greeks. He 
was King of Macedon, a country lying north 
of Greece proper. He headed an army of his 
countrymen, and made an excursion for con- 
quest and glory into Asia. He made himself 
master of all that quarter of the globe, and 
reigned over it in Babylon, till he brought him- 
self to an early grave by the excesses into which 
his boundless prosperity allured him. His fame 
rests on his triumphant success in building up 
for himself so vast an empire, and the admira- 
tion which his career has always excited among 
mankind is heightened by the consideration of 



14 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 100. 

Hannibal. His terrible energy. Julius Cassar. 

his youth, and of the noble and generous im- 
pulses which strongly marked his character. 

The Carthaginian hero was Hannibal. We 
class the Carthaginians among the European 
nations of antiquity ; for, in respect to their ori- 
gin, their civilization, and all their commercial 
and political relations, they belonged to the Eu- 
ropean race, though it is true that their capital 
was on the African side of the Mediterranean 
Sea. Hannibal was the great Carthaginian 
hero. He earned his fame by the energy and 
implacableness of his hate. The work of his 
life was to keep a vast empire in a state of con- 
tinual anxiety and terror for fifty years, so that 
his claim to greatness and glory rests on the de- 
termination, the perseverance, and the success 
with which he fulfilled his function of being, 
while he lived, the terror of the world. 

The Roman hero was Caesar. He was born 
just one hundred years before the Christian era. 
His renown does not depend, like that of Alex- 
ander, on foreign conquests, nor, like that of Han- 
nibal, on the terrible energy of his aggressions 
upon foreign foes, but upon his protracted and 
dreadful contests with, and ultimate triumphs 
over, his rivals and competitors at home. J When 
he appeared upon the stage, the Roman empire 



B.C. 100.] Marius and Sylla. 15 

The ancient Roman empire. The provinces. 

already included nearly all of the world that 
was worth possessing. There were no more 
conquests to be made. Csesar did, indeed, en- 
large, in some degree, the boundaries of the em- 
pire ; but the main question in his day was, 
who should possess the power which preceding 
conquerors had acquired. 

The Roman empire, as it existed in those 
days, must not be conceived of by the reader 
as united together under one compact and con- 
solidated government. It was, on the other 
hand, a vast congeries of nations, widely dissim- 
ilar in every respect from each other, speaking 
various languages, and having various customs 
and laws. They were all, however, more or 
less dependent upon, and connected with, the 
great central power. Some of these countries 
were provinces, and were governed by officers 
appointed and sent out by the authorities at 
Rome. These governors had to collect the tax- 
es of their provinces, and also to preside over 
and direct, in many important respects, the ad- 
ministration of justice. They had, according- 
ly, abundant opportunities to enrich themselves 
in their provinces, by collecting more money 
than they paid over to the government at home, 
and by taking bribes to favor the rich man's 



16 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 100. 

Foreign wars. The victorious general. 

cause in court. Thus the more wealthy and 
prosperous provinces were objects of great com- 
petition among aspirants for office at Rome. 
Leading men would get these appointments, 
and, after remaining long enough in their prov- 
inces to acquire a fortune, would come back to 
Rome, and expend it in intrigues and maneu- 
vers to obtain higher offices still. 

Whenever there was any foreign war to be 
carried on with a distant nation or tribe, there 
was always a great eagerness among all the 
military officers of the state to be appointed to 
the command. They each felt sure that they 
should conquer in the contest, and they could 
enrich themselves still more rapidly by the 
spoils of victory in war, than by extortion and 
bribes in the government of a province in peace. 
Then, besides, a victorious general coming back 
to Rome always found that his military renown 
added vastly to his influence and power in the 
city. He was welcomed with celebrations and 
triumphs ; the people flocked to see him and to 
shout his praise. He placed his trophies of vic- 
tory in the temples, and entertained the popu- 
lace with games and shows, and with combats 
of gladiators or of wild beasts, which he had 
brought home with him for this purpose in the 



B.C. 100.] Marius and Sylla. 17 



Military rivals. Marius and Sylla. 

train of his army. While he was thus enjoy- 
ing his triumph, his political enemies would be 
thrown into the back ground and into the shade ; 
unless, indeed, some one of -them might himself 
be earning the same honors in some other field, 
to come back in due time, and claim his share 
of power and celebrity in his turn. In this case, 
Rome would be sometimes distracted and rent 
by the conflicts and contentions of military ri- 
vals, who had acquired powers too vast for all 
the civil influences of the Republic to regulate 
or control. 

There had been two such rivals just before 
the time of Caesar, who had filled the world with 
their quarrels. They were Marius and Sylla. 
Their very names have been, in all ages of the 
world, since their day, the symbols of rivalry 
and hate. They were the representatives re- 
spectively of the two great parties into which 
the Roman state, like every other community 
in which the population at large have any voice 
in governing, always has been, and probably al- 
ways will be divided, the upper and the lower ; 
or, as they were called in those days, the patri- 
cian and the plebeian. Sylla was the patrician ; 
the higher and more aristocratic portions of the 
community were on his side. Marius was the 

R 



18 



Julius Cesar. [B.C. 100. 



The patricians and plebeians. 



Civil contests. 



favorite of the plebeian masses. In the contests, 
however, which they waged with each other, 




Roman Plebeians. 

they did not trust to the mere influence of votes. 
They relied much more upon the soldiers they 
could gather under their respective standards, 
and upon their power of intimidating, by means 
of them, the Roman assemblies. There was a 



B.C. 100.] Marius and Sylla. 19 

Quarrel about the command of the army. Sylla's violence. 

war to be waged with Mithridates, a very pow- 
erful Asiatic monarch, which promised great op- 
portunities for acquiring fame and plunder. 
Sylla was appointed to the command. While 
he was absent, however, upon some campaign 
in Italy, Marius contrived to have the decision 
reversed, and the command transferred to him. 
Two officers, called tribunes, were sent to Syl- 
la's camp to inform him of the change. Sylla 
killed the officers for daring to bring him such 
a message, and began immediately to march to- 
ward Rome. In retaliation for the murder of 
the tribunes, the party of Marius in the city 
killed some of Sylla's prominent friends there, 
and a general alarm spread itself throughout 
the population. The Senate, which was a sort 
of House of Lords, embodying mainly the pow- 
er and influence of the patrician party, and was, 
of course, on Sylla's side, sent out to him, when 
he had arrived within a few miles of the city, 
urging him to come no further. He pretended 
to comply ; he marked out the ground for a 
camp ; but he did not, on that account, materi- 
ally delay his march. The next morning he 
was in possession of the city. The friends of 
Marius attempted to resist him, by throwing 
stones upon his troops from the roofs of the 



20 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 100. 

Defeat of Marius. His flight 

houses. Sylla ordered every house from which 
these symptoms of resistance appeared to be set 
on fire. Thus the whole population of a vast 
and wealthy city were thrown into a condition 
of extreme danger and terror, by the conflicts 
of two great bands of armed men, each claim- 
ing to be their friends. 

Marius was conquered in this struggle, and 
fled for his life. Many of the friends whom he 
left behind him were killed. The Senate were 
assembled, and, at Sylla's orders, a decree was 
passed declaring Marius a public enemy, and 
offering a reward to any one who would bring 
his head back to Rome. 

Marius fled, friendless and alone, to the south- 
ward, hunted every where by men who were 
eager to get the reward offered for his head. 
After various romantic adventures and narrow 
escapes, he succeeded in making his way across 
the Mediterranean Sea, and found at last a ref- 
uge in a hut among the ruins of Carthage. He 
was an old man, being now over seventy years 
of age. 

Of course, Sylla thought that his great rival 
and enemy was now finally disposed of, and he 
accordingly began to make preparations for his 
Asiatic campaign. He raised his army, built 



B.C. 100.] Marius and Sylla. 21 

Return of Marius. He marches against Rome. 

and equipped a fleet, and went away. As soon 
as he was gone, Marius's friends in the city be- 
gan to come forth, and to take measures for re- 
instating themselves in power. Marius return- 
ed, too, from Africa, and soon gathered about 
him a large army. Being the friend, as he pre- 
tended, of the lower classes of society, he col- 
lected vast multitudes of revolted slaves, out- 
laws, and other desperadoes, and advanced to- 
ward Rome. He assumed, himself, the dress, 
and air, and savage demeanor of his followers. 
His countenance had been rendered haggard 
and cadaverous partly by the influence of ex- 
posures, hardships, and suffering upon his ad- 
vanced age, and partly by the stern and moody 
plans and determinations of revenge which his 
mind was perpetually revolving. He listened 
to the deputations which the Roman Senate sent 
out to him from time to time, as he advanced 
toward the city, but refused to make any terms. 
He moved forward with all the outward delib- 
eration and calmness suitable to his years, while 
all the ferocity of a tiger was burning within. 

As soon as he had gained possession of the 
city, he began his work of destruction. He first 
beheaded one of the consuls, and ordered his 
head to be set up, as a public spectacle, in the 



22 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 100. 

Executions by order of Marius. The Tarpeian Rock. 

most conspicuous place in the city. This was 
the beginning. All the prominent friends of 
Sylla, men of the highest rank and station, 
were then killed, wherever they could be found, 
without sentence, without trial, without any 
other accusation, even, than the military decis- 
ion of Marius that they were his enemies, and 
must die. For those against whom he felt any 
special animosity, he contrived some special 
mode of execution. One, whose fate he wish- 
ed particularly to signalize, was thrown down 
from the Tarpeian Rock. 

The Tarpeian Rock was a precipice about 
fifty feet high, which is still to be seen in Rome, 
from which the worst of state criminals were 
sometimes thrown. They were taken up to the 
top by a stair, and were then hurled from the 
summit, to die miserably, writhing in agony aft- 
er their fall, upon the rocks below. 

The Tarpeian Rock received its name from 
the ancient story of Tarpeia. The tale is, that 
Tarpeia was a Roman girl, who lived at a time 
in the earliest periods of the Roman history, 
when the city was besieged by an army from 
one of the neighboring nations. Besides their 
shields, the story is that the soldiers had gold- 
en bracelets upon their arms. They wished 



B.C. 100.] Marius and Sylla. 23 

The story of Tarpeia. Subterranean passages. 

Tarpeia to open the gates and let them in. 
She promised to do so if they would give her 
their bracelets ; but, as she did not know the 
name of the shining ornaments, the language 
she used to designate them was, " Those things 
you have upon your arms." The soldiers ac- 
ceded to her terms ; she opened the gates, and 
they, instead of giving her the bracelets, threw 
their shields upon her as they passed, until the 
poor girl was crushed down with them and de- 
stroyed. This was near the Tarpeian Rock, 
which afterward took her name. The rock is 
now found to be perforated by a great many 
subterranean passages, the remains, probably, 
of ancient quarries. Some of these galleries 
are now walled up ; others are open ; and the 
people who live around the spot believe, it is 
said, to this day, that Tarpeia herself sits, en- 
chanted, far in the interior of these caverns, 
covered with gold and jewels, but that whoev- 
er attempts to find her is fated by an irresisti- 
ble destiny to lose his way, and he never re- 
turns. The last story is probably as true as 
the other. 

Marius continued his executions and massa- 
cres until the whole of Sylla's party had been 
slain or put to flight. He made every effort to 



24 Julius C-esab. [B.C. 100. 

Escape of Sylla's wife. Illness of Marius. 

discover Sylla's wife and child, with a view to 
destroying them also, but they could not be 
found. Some friends of Sylla, taking compas- 
sion on their innocence and helplessness, con- 
cealed them, and thus saved Marius from the 
commission of one intended crime. Marius 
was disappointed, too, in some other cases, 
where men whom he had intended to kill de- 
stroyed themselves to baffle his vengeance. 
One shut himself up in a room with burning 
charcoal, and was suffocated with the fumes. 
Another bled himself to death upon a public 
altar, calling down the judgments of the god to 
whom he offered this dreadful sacrifice upon the 
head of the tyrant whose atrocious cruelty he 
was thus attempting to evade. 

By the time that Marius had got fairly es- 
tablished in his new position, and was com- 
pletely master of Rome, and the city had be- 
gun to recover a little from the shock and con- 
sternation produced by his executions, he fell 
sick. He was attacked with an acute disease 
of great violence. The attack was perhaps pro- 
duced, and was certainly aggravated by, the 
great mental excitements through which he 
had passed during his exile, and in the entire 
change of fortune which had attended his re- 



B.C. 100.] Marius and Sylla. 25 

Sylla outlawed. Marius delirious. 

turn. From being a wretched fugitive, hiding 
for his life among gloomy and desolate ruins, 
he found himself suddenly transferred to the 
mastery of the world. His mind was excited, 
too, in respect to Sylla, whom he had not yet 
reached or subdued, but who was still prosecu- 
ting his war against Mithridates. Marius had 
had him pronounced by the Senate an enemy to 
his country, and was meditating plans to reach 
him in his distant province, considering his tri- 
umph incomplete as long as his great rival was 
at liberty and alive. The sickness cut short 
these plans, but it only inflamed to double vio- 
lence the excitement and the agitations which 
attended them. 

As the dying tyrant tossed restlessly upon 
his bed, it was plain that the delirious ravings 
which he began soon to utter were excited by 
the same sentiments of insatiable ambition and 
ferocious hate whose calmer dictates he had 
obeyed when well. He imagined that he had 
succeeded in supplanting Sylla in his command, 
and that he was himself in Asia at the head of 
his armies. Impressed with this idea, he stared 
wildly around ; he called aloud the name of Mith- 
ridates ; he shouted orders to imaginary troops ; 
he struggled to break away from the restraints 



26 Julius C^esar. [B.C. 100. 

Death of Marina, Return of Sylla. 

which the attendants about his bedside impos- 
ed, to attack the phantom foes which haunted 
him in his dreams. This continued for several 
days, and when at last nature was exhausted 
by the violence of these paroxysms of phrensy, 
the vital powers which had been for seventy long 
years spending their strength in deeds of self- 
ishness, cruelty, and hatred, found their work 
done, and sunk to revive no more. 

Marius left a son, of the same name with him- 
self, who attempted to retain his father's pow- 
er ; but Sylla, having brought his war with 
Mithridates to a conclusion, was now on his re- 
turn from Asia, and it was very evident that a 
terrible conflict was about to ensue. Sylla ad- 
vanced triumphantly through the country, while 
Marius the younger and his partisans concen- 
trated their forces about the city, and prepared 
for defense. The people of the city were di- 
vided, the aristocratic faction adhering to the 
cause of Sylla, while the democratic influences 
sided with Marius. Political parties rise and 
fall, in almost all ages of the world, in alternate 
fluctuations, like those of the tides. The fac- 
tion of Marius had been for some time in the 
ascendency, and it was now its turn to fall. 
Sylla found, therefore, as he advanced, every 



B.C. 100.] Marius and Sylla. 27 

Marius's son. Proscriptions and massacres of Sylla. 

thing favorable to the restoration of his own 
party to power. He destroyed the armies which 
came out to oppose him. He shut up the young 
Marius in a city not far from Rome, where he 
had endeavored to find shelter and protection, 
and then advanced himself and took possession 
of the city. There he caused to be enacted 
again the horrid scenes of massacre and mur- 
der which Marius had perpetrated before, going, 
however, as much beyond the example which 
he followed as men usually do in the commis- 
sion of crime. He gave out lists of the names 
of men whom he wished to have destroyed, and 
these unhappy victims of his revenge were to 
be hunted out by bands of reckless soldiers, in 
their dwellings, or in the places of public resort 
in the city, and dispatched by the sword wher- 
ever they could be found. The scenes which 
these deeds created in a vast and populous city 
can scarcely be conceived of by those who have 
never witnessed the horrors produced by the 
massacres of civil war. Sylla himself went 
through with this work in the most cool and 
unconcerned manner, as if he were performing 
the most ordinary duties of an officer of state. 
He called the Senate together one day, and, 
while he was addressing them, the attention of 



28 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 100. 

Executions. Extent of Sylla's proscriptions. 

the Assembly was suddenly distracted by the 
noise of outcries and screams in the neighbor- 
ing streets from those who were suffering mili- 
tary execution there. The senators started 
with horror at the sound. Sylla, with an air 
of great composure and unconcern, directed the 
members to listen to him, and to pay no atten- 
tion to what was passing elsewhere. The 
sounds that they heard were, he said, only 
some correction which was bestowed by his or- 
ders on certain disturbers of the public peace. 

Sylla's orders for the execution of those who 
had taken an active part against him were not 
confined to Rome. They went to the neigh- 
boring cities and to distant provinces, carrying 
terror and distress every where. Still, dread- 
ful as these evils were, it is possible for us, in 
the conceptions which we form, to overrate the 
extent of them. In reading the history of the 
Roman empire during the civil wars of Mari- 
us and Sylla, one might easily imagine that 
the whole population of the country was organ- 
ized into the two contending armies, and were 
employed wholly in the work of fighting with 
and massacring each other. But nothing like 
this can be true. It is obviously but a small 
part, after all, of an extended community that 



B.C. 82.] Marius and Sylla. 29 

Man's nature. Husbandmen. 

can be ever actively and personally engaged in 
these deeds of violence and blood. Man is not 
naturally a ferocious wild beast. On the con- 
trary, he loves, ordinarily, to live in peace and 
quietness, to till his lands and tend his flocks, 
and to enjoy the blessings of peace and repose. 
It is comparatively but a small number in any 
age of the world, and in any nation, whose pas- 
sions of ambition, hatred, or revenge become 
so strong as that they love bloodshed and war. 
But these few, when they once get weapons 
into their hands, trample recklessly and merci- 
lessly upon the rest. One ferocious human ti- 
ger, with a spear or a bayonet to brandish, will 
tyrannize as he pleases over a hundred quiet 
men, who are armed only with shepherds' 
crooks, and whose only desire is to live in 
peace with their wives and their children. 

Thus, while Marius and Sylla, with some 
hundred thousand armed and reckless followers, 
were carrying terror and dismay wherever they 
went, there were many millions of herdsmen 
and husbandmen in the Roman world who were 
dwelling in all the peace and quietness they 
could command, improving with their peaceful 
industry every acre where corn would ripen or 
grass grow. It was by taxing and plundering 



30 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 82. 

How the Roman edifices were built. Standing armies. 

the proceeds of this industry that the generals 
and soldiers, the consuls and praetors, and pro- 
consuls and propraetors, filled their treasuries, 
and fed their troops, and paid the artisans for 
fabricating their arms. With these avails they 
built the magnificent edifices of Rome, and 
adorned its environs with sumptuous villas. 
As they had the power and the arms in their 
hands, the peaceful and the industrious had no 
alternative but to submit. They went on as 
well as they could with their labors, bearing 
patiently every interruption, returning again 
to till their fields after the desolating march of 
the army had passed away, and repairing the 
injuries of violence, and the losses sustained by 
plunder, without useless repining. They look- 
ed upon an armed government as a necessary 
and inevitable affliction of humanity, and sub- 
mitted to its destructive violence as they would 
submit to an earthquake or a pestilence. The 
tillers of the soil manage better in this country 
at the present day. They have the power in 
their own hands, and they watch very narrow- 
ly to prevent the organization of such hordes 
of armed desperadoes as have held the peaceful 
inhabitants of Europe in terror from the earli- 
est periods down to the present day. 



B.C. 82.] Marius and Sylla. 31 

Julius Ceesar. Sylla's animosity against him. 

When Sylla returned to Rome, and took pos- 
session of the supreme power there, in looking 
over the lists of public men, there was one whom 
he did not know at first what to do with. It 
was the young Julius Csesar, the subject of this 
history. Csesar was, by birth, patrician, having 
descended from a long line of noble ancestors. 
There had been, before his day, a great many 
Caesars who had held the highest offices of the 
state, and many of them had been celebrated in 
history. He naturally, therefore, belonged to 
Sylla's side, as Sylla was the representative of 
the patrician interest. But then Csesar had 
personally been inclined toward the party of 
Marius. The elder Marius had married his 
aunt, and, besides, Csesar himself had married 
the daughter of Cinna, who had been the most 
efficient and powerful of Marius' s coadjutors and 
friends. Csesar was at this time a very young 
man, and he was of an ardent and reckless char- 
acter, though he had, thus far, taken no active 
part in public affairs. Sylla overlooked him 
for a time, but at length was about to put his 
name on the list of the proscribed. Some of the 
nobles, who were friends both of Sylla and of 
Csesar too, interceded for the young man ; Sylla 
yielded to their request, or, rather, suspended 



32 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 82. 

Caesar refuses to repudiate his wife. His flight. 

his decision, and sent orders to Csesar to repudi- 
ate his wife, the daughter of Cinna. Her name 
was Cornelia. Csesar absolutely refused to re- 
pudiate his wife. He was influenced in this 
decision partly by affection for Cornelia, and 
partly by a sort of stern and indomitable in- 
submissiveness, which formed, from his earliest 
years, a prominent trait in his character, and 
which led him, during all his life, to brave every 
possible danger rather than allow himself to be 
controlled. Caesar knew very well that, when 
this his refusal should be reported to Sylla, the 
next order would be for his destruction. He 
accordingly fled. Sylla deprived him of his 
titles and offices, confiscated his wife's fortune 
and his own patrimonial estate, and put his 
name upon the list of the public enemies. Thus 
Csesar became a fugitive and an exile. The ad- 
ventures which befell him in his wanderings 
will be described in the following chapter. 

Sylla was now in the possession of absolute 
power. He was master of Rome, and of all the 
countries over which Rome held sway. Still 
he was nominally not a magistrate, but only a 
general returning victoriously from his Asiatic 
campaign, and putting to death, somewhat ir- 
regularly, it is true, by a sort of martial law, 



B.C. 82.] Marius and Sylla. 33 

Sylla made dictator. He resigns his power. 

persons whom he found, as he said, disturbing 
the public peace. After having thus effectually 
disposed of the power of his enemies, he laid 
aside, ostensibly, the government of the sword, 
and submitted himself and his future measures 
to the control of law. He placed himself os- 
tensibly at the disposition of the city. They 
chose him dictator, which was investing him 
with absolute and unlimited power. He re- 
mained on this, the highest pinnacle of worldly 
ambition, a short time, and then resigned his 
power, and devoted the remainder of his days to 
literary pursuits and pleasures. Monster as he 
was in the cruelties which he inflicted upon his 
political foes, he was intellectually of a refined 
and cultivated mind, and felt an ardent interest 
in the promotion of literature and the arts. 

The quarrel between Marius and Sylla, in 
respect to every thing which can make such a 
contest great, stands in the estimation of man- 
kind as the greatest personal quarrel which the 
history of the world has ever recorded. Its 
origin was in the simple personal rivalry of 
two ambitious men. It involved, in its conse- 
quences, the peace and happiness of the world. 
In their reckless struggles, the fierce combatants 
trampled on every thing that came in their way, 

C 



34 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 82 

Opinion of mankind in regard to Marius and Sylla. 

and destroyed mercilessly, each in his turn, all 
that opposed them. Mankind have always ex- 
ecrated their crimes, but have never ceased to 
admire the frightful and almost superhuman 
energy with which they committed them. 



B.C. 82.] Cesar's Early Years. 35 

CsBsar's resolution. His person and character. 



Chapter II. 

Cesar's Early Years. 

/^I^ESAR does not seem to have been much 
^-^ disheartened and depressed by his misfor- 
tunes. He possessed in his early life more than 
the usual share of buoyancy and light-hearted- 
ness of youth, and he went away from Rome to 
enter, perhaps, upon years of exile and wander- 
ing, with a determination to face boldly and to 
brave the evils and dangers which surrounded 
him, and not to succumb to them. 

Sometimes they who become great in their 
maturer years are thoughtful, grave, and se- 
date when young. It was not so, however, 
with Csesar. He was of a very gay and lively 
disposition. He was tall and handsome in his 
person, fascinating in his manners, and fond of 
society, as people always are who know or who 
suppose that they shine in it. He had seemed, 
in a word, during his residence at Rome, wholly 
intent upon the pleasures of a gay and joyous 
life, and upon the personal observation which 
his rank, his wealth, his agreeable manners, 



36 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 82. 

Sylla's estimate of Caesar. Caesar's friends intercede for him. 

and his position in society secured for him. In 
fact, they who observed and studied his charac- 
ter in these early years, thought that, although 
his situation was very favorable for acquiring 
power and renown, he would never feel any 
strong degree of ambition to avail himself of its 
advantages. He was too much interested, they 
thought, in personal pleasures ever to become 
great, either as a military commander or a 
statesman. 

Sylla, however, thought differently. He had 
penetration enough to perceive, beneath all the 
gayety and love of pleasure which characterized 
Caesar's youthful life, the germs of a sterner 
and more aspiring spirit, which, he was very 
sorry to see, was likely to expend its future 
energies in hostility to him. By refusing to 
submit to Sylla's commands, Caesar had, in ef- 
fect, thrown himself entirely upon the other 
party, and would be, of course, in future iden- 
tified with them. Sylla consequently looked 
upon him now as a confirmed and settled ene- 
my. Some friends of Caesar among the patri- 
cian families interceded in his behalf with Syl- 
la again, after he had fled from Rome. They 
wished Sylla to pardon him, saying that he was 
a mere boy and could do him no harm. Sylla 



B.C. 82.] Cesar's Early Years. 37 

Caesar's studies. His ambition to be an orator. 

shook his head, saying that, young as he was, 
he saw in him indications of a future power 
which he thought was more to be dreaded than 
that of many Mariuses. 

One reason which led Sylla to form this opin- 
ion of Caesar was, that the young nobleman, 
with all his love of gayety and pleasure, had 
not neglected his studies, but had taken great 
pains to perfect himself in such intellectual pur- 
suits as ambitious men who looked forward to 
political influence and ascendency were accus- 
tomed to prosecute in those days. He had 
studied the Greek language, and read the works 
of Greek historians ; and he attended lectures 
on philosophy and rhetoric, and was obviously 
interested deeply in acquiring power as a pub- 
lic speaker. To write and speak well gave a 
public man great influence in those days. Many 
of the measures of the government were determ- 
ined by the action of great assemblies of the 
free citizens, which action was itself, in a great 
measure, controlled by the harangues of orators 
who had such powers of voice and such quali- 
ties of mind as enabled them to gain the atten- 
tion and sway the opinions of large bodies of 
men. 

It must not be supposed, however, that this 



38 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 82. 

The Forum. Its porticoes and statues. 

popular power was shared by all the inhabit- 
ants of the city. At one time, when the popu- 
lation of the city was about three millions, the 
number of free citizens was only three hundred 
thousand. The rest were laborers, artisans, 
and slaves, who had no voice in public affairs. 
The free citizens held very frequent public as- 
semblies. There were various squares and open 
spaces in the city where such assemblies were 
convened, and where courts of justice were held. 
The Roman name for such a square was forum. 
There was one which was distinguished above 
all the rest, and was called emphatically The 
Forum. It was a magnificent square, surround- 
ed by splendid edifices, and ornamented by 
sculptures and statues without number. There 
were ranges of porticoes along the sides, where 
the people were sheltered from the weather 
when necessary, though it is seldom that there 
is any necessity for shelter under an Italian 
sky. In this area and under these porticoes 
the people held their assemblies, and here courts 
of justice were accustomed to sit. The Forum 
was ornamented continually with new monu- 
ments, temples, statues, and columns by suc- 
cessful generals returning in triumph from for- 
eign campaigns, and by proconsuls and praetors 



B.C.82.] Cesar's Early Years. 41 



Attractions of the Forum. Harangues and political discussions. 

coming back enriched from their provinces, un- 
til it was fairly choked up with its architectu- 
ral magnificence, and it had at last to be par- 
tially cleared again, as one would thin out too 
dense a forest, in order to make room for the 
assemblies which it was its main function to 
contain. 

The people of Rome had, of course, no printed 
books, and yet they were mentally cultivated 
and refined, and were qualified for a very high 
appreciation of intellectual pursuits and pleas- 
ures. In the absence, therefore, of all facilities 
for private reading, the Forum became the great 
central point of attraction. The same kind of 
interest which, in our day, finds its gratification 
in treading volumes of printed history quietly at 
home, or in silently perusing the columns of 
newspapers and magazines in libraries and read- 
ing-rooms, where a whisper is seldom heard, in 
Csesar's day brought every body to the Forum, 
to listen to historical harangues, or political dis- 
cussions, or forensic arguments in the midst of 
noisy crowds. Here all tidings centered ; here 
all questions were discussed and all great elec- 
tions held. Here were waged those ceaseless 
conflicts of ambition and struggles of power on 
which the fate of nations, and sometimes the 



42 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 80-70. 

Apollonius. Caesar studies under him. 

welfare of almost half mankind depended. Of 
course, every ambitious man who aspired to an 
ascendency over his fellow-men, wished to make 
his voice heard in the Forum. To calm the 
boisterous tumult there, and to hold, as some 
of the Roman orators could do, the vast assem- 
blies in silent and breathless attention, was a 
power as delightful in its exercise as it was glo- 
rious in its fame. Caesar had felt this ambition, 
and had devoted himself very earnestly to the 
study of oratory. 

His teacher was Apollonius, a philosopher and 
rhetorician from Rhodes. Rhodes is a Grecian 
island, near the southwestern coast of Asia Mi- 
nor. Apollonius was a teacher of great celeb- 
rity, and Caesar became a very able writer and 
speaker under his instructions. His time and 
attention were, in fact, strangely divided be- 
tween the highest and noblest intellectual avo- 
cations, and the lowest sensual pleasures of a 
gay and dissipated life. The coming of Sylla 
had, however, interrupted all ; and, after re- 
ceiving the dictator's command to give up his 
wife and abandon the Marian faction, and de- 
termining to disobey it, he fled suddenly from 
Rome, as was stated at the close of the last 
chapter, at midnight, and in disguise. 



B.C. 80-70.], Cesar's Early Years. 43 

Caesar's wanderings. He is seized by a centurion. 

He was sick, too, at the time, with an inter- 
mittent fever. The paroxysm returned once in 
three or four days, leaving him in tolerable 
health during the interval. He went first into 
the country of the Sabines, northeast of Rome, 
where he wandered up and down, exposed con- 
tinually to great dangers from those who knew 
that he was an object of the great dictator's dis- 
pleasure, and who were sure of favor and of a 
reward if they could carry his head to Sylla. 
He had to change his quarters every day, and 
to resort to every possible mode of concealment. 
He was, however, at last discovered, and seized 
by a centurion. A centurion was a commander 
of a hundred men ; his rank and his position, 
therefore, corresponded somewhat with those of 
a captain in a modern army. Caesar was not 
much disturbed at this accident. He offered 
the centurion a bribe sufficient to induce him 
to give up his prisoner, and so escaped. 

The two ancient historians, whose records 
contain nearly all the particulars of the early 
life of Csesar which are now known, give some- 
what contradictory accounts of the adventures 
which befell him during his subsequent wander- 
ings. They relate, in general, the same inci- 
dents, but in such different connections, that the 



44 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 80-70. 

Caesar in Asia Minor. He joins the court of Nicomedes. 

precise chronological order of the events which 
occurred can not now be ascertained. At all 
events, Caesar, finding that he was no longer safe 
in the vicinity of Rome, moved gradually to the 
eastward, attended by a few followers, until he 
reached the sea, and there he embarked on 
board a ship to leave his native land altogether. 
After various adventures and wanderings, he 
found himself at length in Asia Minor, and he 
made his way at last to the kingdom of Bithyn- 
ia, on the northern shore. The name of the 
king of Bithynia was Nicomedes. Caesar joined 
himself to Nicomedes's court, and entered into 
his service. In the mean time, Sylla had ceased 
to pursue him, and ultimately granted him a 
pardon, but whether before or after this time is 
not now to be ascertained. At all events, Caesar 
became interested in the scenes and enjoyments 
of Nicomedes's court, and allowed the time to 
pass away without forming any plans for re- 
turning to Rome. 

On the opposite side of Asia Minor, that is. 
on the southern shore, there was a wild and 
mountainous region called Cilicia. The great 
chain of mountains called Taurus approaches 
here very near to the sea, and the steep confor- 
mations of the land, which, in the interior, pro- 



B.C.80-70.] Cesar's Early Years. 45 

Cilicia. Character of its inhabitants. 

duce lofty ranges and summits, and dark valleys 
and ravines, form, along the line of the shore, 
capes and promontories, bounded by precipitous 
sides, and with deep bays and harbors between 
them. The people of Cilicia were accordingly 
half sailors, half mountaineers. They built 
swift galleys, and made excursions in great force 
over the Mediterranean Sea for conquest and 
plunder. They would capture single ships, and 
sometimes even whole fleets of merchantmen. 
They were even strong enough on many occa- 
sions to land and take possession of a harbor and 
a town, and hold it, often, for a considerable 
time, against all the efforts of the neighboring 
powers to dislodge them. In case, however, 
their enemies became at any time too strong 
for them, they would retreat to their harbors, 
which were so defended by the fortresses which 
guarded them, and by the desperate bravery of 
the garrisons, that the pursuers generally did 
not dare to attempt to force their way in ; and 
if, in any case, a town or a port was taken, the 
indomitable savages would continue their re- 
treat to the fastnesses of the mountains, where 
it was utterly useless to attempt to follow them. 
But with all their prowess and skill as naval 
combatants, and their hardihood as mountain- 



46 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 80-70. 

The Cilicians wanting in poets and historians. Robbers and pirates. 

eers, the Cilicians lacked one thing which is 
very essential in every nation to an honorable 
military fame. They had no poets or histori- 
ans of their own, so that the story of their deeds 
had to be told to posterity by their enemies. 
If they had been able to narrate their own ex- 
ploits, they would have figured, perhaps, upon 
the page of history as a small but brave and ef- 
ficient maritime power, pursuing for many 
years a glorious career of conquest, and acquir- 
ing imperishable renown by their enterprise 
and success. As it was, the Romans, their en- 
emies, described their deeds and gave them 
their designation. They called them robbers 
and pirates ; and robbers and pirates they must 
forever remain. 

And it is, in fact, very likely true that the 
Cilician commanders did not pursue their con- 
quests and commit their depredations on the 
rights and the property of others in quite so 
systematic and methodical a manner as some 
other conquering states have done. They prob- 
ably seized private property a little more un- 
ceremoniously than is customary ; though all 
belligerent nations, even in these Christian ages 
of the world, feel at liberty to seize and confis- 
cate private property when they find it afloat 



B.C. 80-70.] Cesar's Early Years. 47 

Depredations of the Cilicians. Expeditions sent against them. 

at sea, while, by a strange inconsistency, they 
respect it on the land. The Cilician pirates 
considered themselves at war with all mankind, 
and, whatever merchandise they found passing 
from port to port along the shores of the Medi- 
terranean, they considered lawful spoil. They 
intercepted the corn which was going from Sic- 
ily to Rome, and filled their own granaries with 
it. They got rich merchandise from the ships 
of Alexandria, which brought, sometimes, gold,, 
and gems, and costly fabrics from the East; 
and they obtained, often, large sums of money 
by seizing men of distinction and wealth, who 
were continually passing to and fro between It- 
aly and Greece, and holding them for a ransom. 
They were particularly pleased to get posses- 
sion in this way of Roman generals and officers 
of state, who were going out to take the com- 
mand of armies, or who were returning from 
their provinces with the wealth which they had 
accumulated there. 

Many expeditions were fitted out and many 
naval commanders were commissioned to sup- 
press and subdue these common enemies of 
mankind, as the Romans called them. At one 
time, while a distinguished general, named An- 
tonius, was in pursuit of them at the head 



48 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 80-70. 

Boldness and courage of the Cilicians. They capture Csesar. 

of a fleet, a party of the pirates made a descent 
upon the Italian coast, south of Rome, at Ni- 
cenum, where the ancient patrimonial mansion 
of this very Antonius was situated, and took 
away several members of his family as captives, 
and so compelled him to ransom them by pay- 
ing a very large sum of money. The pirates 
grew bolder and bolder in proportion to their 
success. They finally almost stopped all inter- 
course between Italy and Greece, neither the 
merchants daring to expose their merchandise, 
nor the passengers their persons to such dangers 
They then approached nearer and nearer to 
Rome, and at last actually entered the Tiber, 
and surprised and carried off a Roman fleet 
which was anchored there. Caesar himself fell 
into the hands of these pirates at some time 
during the period of his wanderings. 

The pirates captured the ship in which he 
was sailing near Pharmacusa, a small island 
in the northeastern part of the iEgean Sea. He 
was not at this time in the destitute condition 
in which he had found himself on leaving Rome, 
but was traveling with attendants suitable to 
his rank, and in such a style and manner as at 
once made it evident to the pirates that he was 
a man of distinction. They accordingly held 



B.C. 80-70.] Cesar's Early Years. 49 

Ceesar's air of superiority. His ransom. 

him for ransom, and, in the mean time, until he 
could take measures for raising the money, they 
kept him a prisoner on board the vessel which 
had captured him. 

In this situation, Csesar, though entirely in 
the power and at the mercy of his lawless cap- 
tors, assumed such an air of superiority and 
command in all his intercourse with them as 
at first awakened their astonishment, then ex- 
cited their admiration, and ended in almost sub- 
jecting them to his will. He asked them what 
they demanded for his ransom. They said 
twenty talents, which was quite a large amount, 
a talent itself being a considerable sum of money. 
Caesar laughed at this demand, and told them 
it was plain that they did not know who he was. 
He would give them fifty talents. He then sent 
away his attendants to the shore, with orders to 
proceed to certain cities where he was known, 
in order to procure the money, retaining only a 
physician and two servants for himself. While 
his messengers were gone, he remained on board 
the ship of his captors, assuming in every re- 
spect the air and manner of their master. "When 
he wished to sleep, if they made a noise which 
disturbed him, he sent them orders to be still. 
He joined them in their sports and diversions 

D 



50 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 80-70. 

Caesar at liberty. He captures the pirates in his turn. 

on the deck, surpassing them in their feats, and 
taking the direction of every thing as if he were 
their acknowledged leader. He wrote orations 
and verses which he read to them, and if his 
wild auditors did not appear to appreciate the 
literary excellence of his compositions, he told 
them that they were stupid fools without any 
taste, adding, by way of apology, that nothing 
better could be expected of such barbarians. 

The pirates asked him one day what he should 
do to them if he should ever, at any future time, 
take them prisoners. Csesar said that he would 
crucify every one of them. 

The ransom money at length arrived. Caesar 
paid it to the pirates, and they, faithful to their 
covenant, sent him in a boat to the land. He 
was put ashore on the coast of Asia Minor. He 
proceeded immediately to Miletus, the near- 
est port, equipped a small fleet there, and put 
to sea. He sailed at once to the roadstead 
where the pirates had been lying, and found 
them still at anchor there, in perfect security.* 
He attacked them, seized their ships, recovered 
his ransom money, and took the men all pris- 
oners. He conveyed his captives to the land, 
and there fulfilled his threat that he would cru- 

* See Frontispiece. 



B.C. 80-70.] Cesar's Early Years. 51 

Ccesar at Rhodes. He returns to Rome. 

cify them by cutting their throats and nailing 
their dead bodies to crosses which his men 
erected for the purpose along the shore. 

During his absence from Rome Caesar went 
to Rhodes, where his former preceptor resided, 
and he continued to pursue there for some time 
his former studies. He looked forward still to 
appearing one day in the Roman Forum. In 
fact, he began to receive messages from his 
friends at home that they thought it would be 
safe for him to return. Sylla had gradually 
withdrawn from power, and finally had died. 
The aristocratical party were indeed still in 
the ascendency, but the party of Marius had 
begun to recover a little from the total over- 
throw with which Sylla's return, and his terri- 
ble military vengeance, had overwhelmed them. 
Caesar himself, therefore, they thought, might, 
with prudent management, be safe in return- 
ing to Rome. 

He returned, but not to be prudent or cau- 
tious ; there was no element of prudence or 
caution in his character. As soon as he arriv- 
ed, he openly espoused the popular party. His 
first public act was to arraign the governor of 
the great province of Macedonia, through which 
he had passed on his way to Bithynia. It was 



52 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 80-70. 

Caesar impeaches Dolabella. Excitement in consequence. 

a consul whom he thus impeached, and a strong 
partisan of Sylla's. His name was Dolabella. 
The people were astonished at his daring in thus 
raising the standard of resistance to Sylla's pow- 
er, indirectly, it is true, but none the less real- 
ly on that account. When the trial came on, 
and Caesar appeared at the Forum, he gained 
great applause by the vigor and force of his or- 
atory. There was, of course, a very strong and 
general interest felt in the case ; the people all 
seeming to understand that, in this attack on 
Dolabella, Caesar was appearing as their cham- 
pion, and their hopes were revived at having at 
last found a leader capable of succeeding Ma- 
rius, and building up their cause again. Dola- 
bella was ably defended by orators on the oth- 
er side, and was, of course, acquitted, for the 
power of Sylla's party was still supreme. All 
Rome, however, was aroused and excited by the 
boldness of Caesar's attack, and by the extraor- 
dinary ability which he evinced in his mode of 
conducting it. He became, in fact, at once 
one of the most conspicuous and prominent 
men in the city. 

Encouraged by his success, and the applaus- 
es which he received, and feeling every day a 
greater and greater consciousness of power, he 



B.C.80-70.] Cesar's Early Years. 53 

Caesar's increasing power. Death ofMarius's wife. 

began to assume more and more openly the 
character of the leader of the popular party. 
He devoted himself to public speaking in the 
Forum, both before popular assemblies and in 
the courts of justice, where he was employed a 
great deal as an advocate to defend those who 
were accused of political crimes. The people, 
considering him as their rising champion, were 
predisposed to regard every thing that he did 
with favor, and there was really a great intel- 
lectual power displayed in his orations and ha- 
rangues. He acquired, in a word, great celeb- 
rity by his boldness and energy, and his bold- 
ness and energy were themselves increased in 
their turn as he felt the strength of his position 
increase with his growing celebrity. 

At length the wife of Marius, who was Cae- 
sar's aunt, died. She had lived in obscurity 
since her husband's proscription and death, his 
party having been put down so effectually that 
it was dangerous to appear to be her friend. 
Caesar, however, made preparations for a mag- 
nificent funeral for her. There was a place in 
the Forum, a sort of pulpit, where public orators 
were accustomed to stand in addressing the as- 
sembly on great occasions. This pulpit was 
adorned with the brazen beaks of ships which 



54 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 67. 

Caesar's panegyric on Marius's wife. Its success. 

had been taken by the Romans in former wars. 
The name of such a beak was rostrum ; in the 
plural, rostra. The pulpit was itself, therefore, 
called the Rostra, that is, The Beaks ; and the 
people were addressed from it on great public 
occasions.^ Caesar pronounced a splendid pan- 
egyric upon the wife of Marius, at this her fu- 
neral, from the Rostra, in the presence of a vast 
concourse of spectators, and he had the bold- 
ness to bring out to view on the occasion cer- 
tain household images of Marius, which had 
been concealed from view ever since his death. 
Producing them again on such an occasion was 
annulling, so far as a public orator could do it, 
the sentence of condemnation which Sylla and 
the patrician party had pronounced against him, 
and bringing him forward again as entitled to 
public admiration and applause. The patrician 
partisans who were present attempted to re- 
buke this bold maneuver with expressions of dis- 
approbation, but these expressions were drown- 
ed in the loud and long-continued bursts of ap- 
plause with which the great mass of the assem- 
bled multitude hailed and sanctioned it. The 
experiment was very bold and very hazardous, 
but it was triumphantly successful. 

* In modern books this pulpit is sometimes called the Ros- 
trum, using the word in the singular. 



B.C. 67.] Cesar's Early Years. 55 

Caesar's oration on his wife. Alarm of the patricians. 

A short time after this Csesar had another 
opportunity for delivering a funeral oration ; it 
was in the case of his own wife, the daughter 
of China, who had been the colleague and co- 
adjutor of Marius during the days of his power. 
It was not usual to pronounce such panegyrics 
upon Roman ladies unless they had attained 
to an advanced age. Csesar, however, was dis- 
posed to make the case of his own wife an ex- 
ception to the ordinary rule. He saw in the 
occasion an opportunity to give a new impulse 
to the popular cause, and to make further prog- 
ress in gaining the popular favor. The exper- 
iment was successful in this instance too. The 
people were pleased at the apparent affection 
which his action evinced ; and as Cornelia was 
the daughter of Cinna, he had opportunity, un- 
der pretext of praising the birth and parentage 
of the deceased, to laud the men whom Sylla's 
party had outlawed and destroyed. In a word, 
the patrician party saw with anxiety and dread 
that Csesar was rapidly consolidating and organ- 
izing, and bringing back to its pristine strength 
and vigor, a party whose restoration to power 
would of course involve their own political, and 
perhaps personal ruin. 

Csesar began soon to receive appointments to 



56 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 67. 

Csesar in office. Shows and entertainments. 

public office, and thus rapidly increased his in- 
fluence and power. Public officers and candi- 
dates for office were accustomed in those days 
to expend great sums of money in shows and 
spectacles to amuse the people. Csesar went 
to a great extreme in these expenditures. He 
brought gladiators from distant provinces, and 
trained them at great expense, to fight in the 
enormous amphitheaters of the city, in the 
midst of vast assemblies of men. Wild beasts 
were procured also from the forests of Africa, 
and brought over in great numbers, under his 
direction, that the people might be entertained 
by their combats with captives taken in war, 
who were reserved for this dreadful fate. Cse- 
sar gave, also, splendid entertainments, of the 
most luxurious and costly character, and he 
mingled with his quests at these entertainments, 
and with the people at large on other occasions, 
in so complaisant and courteous a manner as to 
gain universal favor. 

He soon, by these means, not only exhausted 
all his own pecuniary resources, but plunged 
himself enormously into debt. It was not dif- 
ficult for such a man in those days to procure 
an almost unlimited credit for such purposes as 
these, for every one knew that, if he finally sue- 



B.C. 67.] Cesar's Early Years. 57 

Caesar's extravagance. His embarrassments. 

ceeded in placing himself, by means of the pop- 
ularity thus acquired, in stations of power, he 
could soon indemnify himself and all others 
who had aided him. The peaceful merchants, 
and artisans, and husbandmen of the distant 
provinces over which he expected to rule, would 
yield the revenues necessary to fill the treasu- 
ries thus exhausted. Still, Caesar's expendi- 
tures were so lavish, and the debts he incurred 
were so enormous, that those who had not the 
most unbounded confidence in his capacity and 
his powers believed him irretrievably ruined. 

The particulars, however, of these difficulties, 
and the manner in which Csesar contrived to 
extricate himself from them, will be more fully 
detailed in the next chapter. 



58 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 67. 

Caesar's rise to power. Government of Rome. 



Chapter III. 

Advancement to the Consulship. 

TjlROM this time, which was about sixty- 
-■- seven years before the birth of Christ, Csesar 
remained for nine years generally at Rome, en- 
gaged there in a constant struggle for power. 
He was successful in these efforts, rising all the 
time from one position of influence and honor to 
another, until he became altogether the most 
prominent and powerful man in the city. A 
great many incidents are recorded, as attending 
these contests, which illustrate in a very striking 
manner the strange mixture of rude violence and 
legal formality by which Rome was in those 
days governed. 

Many of the most important offices of the 
state depended upon the votes of the people ; 
and as the people had very little opportunity to 
become acquainted with the real merits of the 
case in respect to questions of government, they 
gave their votes very much according to the 
personal popularity of the candidate. Public 
men had very little moral principle in those 



B.C. 67-65.] Made Consul. 59 

Bribery and corruption. Public amusements. 

days, and they would accordingly resort to any 
means whatever to procure this personal popu- 
larity. They who wanted office were accus- 
tomed to bribe influential men among the people 
to support them, sometimes by promising them 
subordinate offices, and sometimes by the direct 
donation of sums of money ; and they would try 
to please the mass of the people, who were too 
numerous to be paid with offices or with gold, 
by shows and spectacles, and entertainments of 
every kind which they would provide for their 
amusement. 

This practice seems to us very absurd ; and 
we wonder that the Roman people should toler- 
ate it, since it is evident that the means for de- 
fraying these expenses must come, ultimately, 
in some way or other, from them. And yet, ab- 
surd as it seems, this sort of policy is not wholly 
disused even in our day. The operas and the 
theaters, and other similar establishments in 
France, are sustained, in part, by the govern- 
ment ; and the liberality and efficiency with 
which this is done, forms, in some degree, the 
basis of the popularity of each succeeding admin- 
istration. The plan is better systematized and 
regulated in our day, but it is, in its nature, 
substantially the same. 



60 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 67-65. 

Amusements for the people. Provided by the government. 

In fact, furnishing amusements for the people, 
and also providing supplies for their wants, as 
well as affording them protection, were consid- 
ered the legitimate objects of government in 
those days. It is very different at the present 
time, and especially in this country. The 
w T hole community are now united in the desire 
to confine the functions of government within 
the narrowest possible limits, such as to include 
only the preservation of public order and public 
safety. The people prefer to supply their own 
wants and to provide their own enjoyments, 
rather than to invest government with the power 
to do it for them, knowing very well that, on 
the latter plan, the burdens they will have to 
bear, though concealed for a time, must be 
doubled in the end. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that there 
were some reasons in the days of the Romans 
for providing public amusements for the people 
on an extended scale which do not exist now. 
They had very few facilities then for the private 
and separate enjoyments of home, so that they 
were much more inclined than the people of this 
country are now to seek pleasure abroad and 
in. public. The climate, too, mild and genial 
nearly all the year, favored this. Then they 



B.C. 67-65.] Made Consul. 61 

How the people were supported. Agrarian laws. 

were not interested, as men are now, in the pur- 
suits and avocations of private industry. The 
people of Rome were not a community of mer- 
chants, manufacturers, and citizens, enriching 
themselves, and adding to the comforts and en- 
joyments of the rest of mankind by the products 
of their labor. They were supported, in a great 
measure, by the proceeds of the tribute of for- 
eign provinces, and by the plunder taken by the 
generals in the name of the state in foreign 
wars. From the same source, too — foreign con- 
quest — captives were brought home, to be train- 
ed as gladiators to amuse them with their com- 
bats, and statues and paintings to ornament the 
public buildings of the city. In the same man- 
ner, large quantities of corn, which had been 
taken in the provinces, were often distributed 
at Rome. And sometimes even land itself, in 
large tracts, which had been confiscated by the 
state, or otherwise taken from the original pos- 
sessors, was divided among the people. The 
laws enacted from time to time for this purpose 
were called Agrarian laws ; and the phrase after- 
ward passed into a sort of proverb, inasmuch as 
plans proposed in modern times for conciliating 
the favor of the populace by sharing among them 
property belonging to the state or to the rich, 
are designated by the name of Agrarianism. 



62 Julius Caesar. [B.C 67-65. 

Government of Rome. Its foreign policy. 

Thus Rome was a city supported, in a great 
measure, by the fruits of its conquests, that is, 
in a certain sense, by plunder. It was a vast 
community most efficiently and admirably or- 
ganized for this purpose ; and yet it would jiot 
be perfectly just to designate the people simply 
as a band of robbers. They rendered, in some 
sense, an equivalent for what they took, in 
establishing and enforcing a certain organiza- 
tion of society throughout the world, and in 
preserving a sort of public order and peace. 
They built cities, they constructed aqueducts 
and roads ; they formed harbors, and protected 
them by piers and by castles ; they protected 
commerce, and cultivated the arts, and encour- 
aged literature, and enforced a general quiet 
and peace among mankind, allowing of no vio- 
lence or war except what they themselves cre- 
ated. Thus they governed the world, and they 
felt, as all governors of mankind always do, fully 
entitled to supply themselves with the comforts 
and conveniences of life, in consideration of the 
service which they thus rendered. 

Of course, it was to be expected that they 
would sometimes quarrel among themselves 
about the spoils. Ambitious men were always 
arising, eager to obtain opportunities to make 



B.C. 67-65.] Made Consul. 63 

Caesar's policy. His success. He is made quaestor. 

fresh conquests, and to bring home new sup- 
plies, and those who were most successful in 
making the results of their conquests available 
in adding to the wealth and to the public en- 
joyments of the city, would, of course, be most 
popular with the voters. Hence extortion in 
the provinces, and the most profuse and lavish 
expenditure in the city, became the policy which 
every great man must pursue to rise to power. 

Csesar entered into this policy with his whole 
soul, founding all his hopes of success upon the 
favor of the populace. Of course, he had many 
rivals and opponents among the patrician ranks, 
and in the Senate, and they often impeded and 
thwarted his plans and measures for a time, 
though he always triumphed in the end. 

One of the first offices of importance to which 
he attained was that of qucestor, as it was call- 
ed, which office called him away from Rome 
into the province of Spain, making him the sec- 
ond in command there. The officer first in 
command in the province was, in this instance, 
a praetor. During his absence in Spain, Cae- 
sar replenished in some degree his exhausted 
finances, but he soon became very much dis- 
contented with so subordinate a position. His 
discontent was greatly increased by his com- 



64 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 65. 

Caesar leaves Spain. His project. 

ing unexpectedly, one day, at a city then called 
Hades — the present Cadiz — upon a statue of 
Alexander, which adorned one of the public ed- 
ifices there. Alexander died when he was only 
about thirty years of age, having before that 
period made himself master of the world. Cae- 
sar was himself now about thirty-five years of 
age, and it made him very sad to reflect that, 
though he had lived five years longer than Al- 
exander, he had yet accomplished so little. He 
was thus far only the second in a province, 
while he burned with an insatiable ambition to 
be the first in Rome. The reflection made him 
so uneasy that he left his post before his time 
expired, and went back to Rome, forming, on 
the way, desperate projects for getting power 
there. 

His rivals and enemies accused him of vari- 
ous schemes, more or less violent and treasona- 
ble in their nature, but how justly it is not now 
possible to ascertain. They alleged that one of 
his plans was to join some of the neighboring col- 
onies, whose inhabitants wished to be admitted 
to the freedom of the city, and, making com- 
mon cause with them, to raise an armed force 
and take possession of Rome. It was said that, 
to prevent the accomplishment of this design, 



B.C. 65-60.] Made Consul. 65 

Caesar accused of treason. He is made aedile. 

an army which they had raised for the purpose 
of an expedition against the Cilician pirates 
was detained from its march, and that Caesar, 
seeing that the government were on their guard 
against him, abandoned the plan. 

They also charged him with having formed, 
after this, a plan within the city for assassina- 
ting the senators in the senate house, and then 
usurping, with his fellow-conspirators, the su- 
preme power. Crassus, who was a man of vast 
wealth and a great friend of Caesar's, was asso- 
ciated with him in this plot, and was to have 
been made dictator if it had succeeded. But, 
notwithstanding the brilliant prize with which 
Caesar attempted to allure Crassus to the en- 
terprise, his courage failed him when the time 
for action arrived. Courage and enterprise, in 
fact, ought not to be expected of the rich ; they 
are the virtues of poverty. 

Though the Senate were thus jealous and 
suspicious of Caesar, and were charging him 
continually with these criminal designs, the 
people were on his side ; and the more he was 
hated by the great, the more strongly he became 
intrenched in the popular favor. They chose 
him cedile. The aedile had the charge of the 
public edifices of the city, and of the games, 

E " 



66 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 65-60. 

Gladiatorial shows. Csesar's increasing popularity. 

spectacles, and shows which were exhibited in 
them. Caesar entered with great zeal into the 
discharge of the duties of this office. He made 
arrangements for the entertainment of the peo- 
ple on the most magnificent scale, and made 
great additions and improvements to the pub- 
lic buildings, constructing porticoes and piazzas 
around the areas where his gladiatorial shows 
and the combats with wild beasts were to be 
exhibited. He provided gladiators in such num- 
bers, and organized and arranged them in such 
a manner, ostensibly for their training, that his 
enemies among the nobility pretended to believe 
that he was intending to use them as an armed 
force against the government of the city. They 
accordingly made laws limiting and restricting 
the number of the gladiators to be employed. 
Caesar then exhibited his shows on the reduced 
scale which the new laws required, taking care 
that the people should understand to whom the 
responsibility for this reduction in the scale of 
their pleasures belonged. They, of course, mur- 
mured against the Senate, and Caesar stood 
higher in their favor than ever. 

He was getting, however, by these means, 
very deeply involved in debt; and, in order 
partly to retrieve his fortunes in this respect, 



B.C. 65-60.] Made Consul. 67 

Caesar thwarted. His resentment. 

he made an attempt to have Egypt assigned to 
him as a province. Egypt was then an im- 
mensely rich and fertile country. It had, how- 
ever, never been a Roman province. It was an 
independent kingdom, in alliance with the Ro- 
mans, and Caesar's proposal that it should be 
assigned to him as a province appeared very 
extraordinary. His pretext was, that the peo- 
ple of Egypt had recently deposed and expelled 
their king, and that, consequently, the Romans 
might properly take possession of it. The Sen- 
ate, however, resisted this plan, either from 
jealousy of Csesar or from a sense of justice 
to Egypt ; and, after a violent contest, Csesar 
found himself compelled to give up the design. 
He felt, however, a strong degree of resent- 
ment against the patrician party who had thus 
thwarted his designs. Accordingly, in order to 
avenge himself upon them, he one night re- 
placed certain statues and trophies of Marius 
in the Capitol, which had been taken down by 
order of Sylla when he returned to power. Ma- 
rius, as will be recollected, had been the great 
champion of the popular party, and the enemy 
of the patricians ; and, at the time of his down- 
fall, all the memorials of his power and great- 
ness had been every where removed from Rome, 



68 Julius Cjssar. [B.C. 65-60. 

The statues of Marius restored. Rage of the patricians. 

and among them these statues and trophies, 
which had been erected in the Capitol in com- 
memoration of some former victories, and had 
remained there until Sylla's triumph, when 
they were taken down and destroyed. Caesar 
now ordered new ones to be made, far more 
magnificent than before. They were made 
secretly, and put up in the night. His office 
as aedile gave him the necessary authority. 
The next morning, when the people saw these 
splendid monuments of their great favorite re- 
stored, the whole city was animated with ex- 
citement and joy. The patricians, on the other 
hand, were filled with vexation and rage. "Here 
is a single officer," said they, " who is attempt- 
ing to restore, by his individual authority, what 
has been formally abolished by a decree of the 
Senate. He is trying to see how much we will 
bear. If he finds that we will submit to this, 
he will attempt bolder measures still." They 
accordingly commenced a movement to have 
the statues and trophies taken down again, but 
the people rallied in vast numbers in defense of 
them. They made the Capitol ring with their 
shouts of applause ; and the Senate, finding their 
power insufficient to cope with so great a force, 
gave up the point, and Caesar gained the day. . 



B.C. 65-60.] 


Made Consul. 


69 


The Good Goddess. 




Clodius. 



. Csesar had married another wife after the 
death of Cornelia. Her name was Pompeia. 
He divorced Pompeia about this time, under 
very extraordinary circumstances. Among the 
other strange religious ceremonies and celebra- 
tions which were observed in those days, was 
one called the celebration of the mysteries of the 
Good Goddess. This celebration was held by 
females alone, every thing masculine being most 
carefully excluded. Even the pictures of men, 
if there were any upon the walls of the house 
where the assembly was held, were covered. 
The persons engaged spent the night together 
in music and dancing and various secret cere- 
monies, half pleasure, half worship, according 
to the ideas and customs of the time. 

The mysteries of the Good Goddess were to 
be celebrated one night at Caesar's house, he 
himself having, of course, withdrawn. In the 
middle of the night, the whole company in one 
of the apartments were thrown into consterna- 
tion at finding that one of their number was a 
man. He had a smooth and youthful-looking 
face, and was very perfectly disguised in the 
dress of a female. He proved to be a certain 
Clodius, a very base and dissolute young man, 
though of great wealth and high connections. 



70 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 65-60. 

Caesar divorces his wife. Quarrel of Clodius and Milo. 

He had been admitted by a female slave of Pom- 
peia's, whom he had succeeded in bribing. It 
was suspected that it was with Pompeia's con- 
currence. At any rate, Csesar immediately di- 
vorced his wife. The Senate ordered an inquiry 
into the affair, and, after the other members of 
the household had given their testimony, Csesar 
himself was called upon, but he had nothing to 
say. He knew nothing about it. They asked 
him, then, why he had divorced Pompeia, unless 
he had some evidence for believing her guilty. 
He replied, that a wife of Csesar must not only 
be without crime, but without suspicion. 

Clodius was a very desperate and lawless 
character, and his subsequent history shows, in 
a striking point of view, the degree of violence 
and disorder which reigned in those times. He 
became involved in a bitter contention with an- 
other citizen whose name was Milo, and each, 
gaining as many adherents as he could, at 
length drew almost the whole city into their 
quarrel. Whenever they went out, they were 
attended with armed bands, which were con- 
tinually in danger of coming into collision. The 
collision at last came, quite a battle was fought, 
and Clodius was killed. This made the diffi- 
culty worse than it was before. Parties were 



B.C. 65-60.] Made Consul. 



Violence of the times. Conspiracy of Catiline. 

formed, and violent disputes arose on the ques- 
tion of bringing Milo to trial for the alleged 
murder. He was brought to trial at last, but 
so great was the public excitement, that the 
consuls for the time surrounded and rilled the 
whole Forum with armed men while the trial 
was proceeding, to ensure the safety of the court. 
In fact, violence mingled itself continually, 
in those times, with almost all public proceed- 
ings, whenever any special combination of cir- 
cumstances occurred to awaken unusual ex- 
citement. At. one time, when Caesar was in 
office, a very dangerous conspiracy was brought 
to light, which was headed by the notorious 
Catiline. It was directed chiefly against the 
Senate and the higher departments of the gov- 
ernment ; it contemplated, in fact, their utter 
destruction, and the establishment of an entirely 
new government on the ruins of the existing 
constitution. Caesar was himself accused of 
a participation in this plot. When it was dis- 
covered, Catiline himself fled ; some of the 
other conspirators were, however, arrested, and 
there was a long and very excited debate in the 
Senate on the question of their punishment. 
Some were for death. Caesar, however, very 
earnestly opposed this plan, recommending, in- 



72 Julius C^s a r. [B.C. 65-60. 

Warm debate in the Senate. Csesar in danger of violence. 

stead, the confiscation of the estates of the con- 
spirators, and their imprisonment in some of the 
distant cities of Italy. The dispute grew very- 
warm, Caesar urging his point with great per- 
severance and determination, and with a degree 
of violence which threatened seriously to ob- 
struct the proceedings, when a body of armed 
men, a sort of guard of honor stationed there, 
gathered around him, and threatened him with 
their swords. Quite a scene of disorder and 
terror ensued. Some of the senators arose 
hastily and fled from the vicinity of Caesar's 
seat to avoid the danger. Others, more coura- 
geous, or more devoted in their attachment to 
him, gathered around him to protect him, as far 
as they could, by interposing their bodies be- 
tween his person and the weapons of his assail- 
ants. Caesar soon left the Senate, and for a 
long time would return to it no more. 

Although Caesar was all this time, on the 
whole, rising in influence and power, there were 
still fluctuations in his fortune, and the tide 
sometimes, for a short period, went strongly 
against him. He was at one time, when greatly 
involved in debt, and embarrassed in all his af- 
fairs, a candidate for a very high office, that of 
Pontifex Maximus, or sovereign pontiff. The 



B.C. 65-60.] Made Consul. 73 

Caesar's struggle for the office of pontifex maximus. He is deposed. 

office of the pontifex was originally that of build- 
ing and keeping custody of the bridges of the 
city, the name being derived from the Latin 
word pons, which signifies bridge. To this, 
however, had afterward been added the care 
of the temples, and finally the regulation and 
control of the ceremonies of religion, so that it 
came in the end to be an office of the highest 
dignity and honor. Csesar made the most des- 
perate efforts to secure his election, resorting to 
such measures, expending such sums, and in- 
volving himself in debt to such an extreme, that, 
if he failed, he would be irretrievably ruined. 
His mother, sympathizing with him in his anxi- 
ety, kissed him when he went away from the 
house on the morning of the election, and bade 
him farewell with tears. He told her that he 
should come home that night the pontiff, or he 
should never come home at all. He succeeded 
in gaining the election. 

At one time Csesar was actually deposed 
from a high office which he held by a decree of 
the Senate. He determined to disregard this 
decree, and go on in the discharge of his office 
as usual. But the Senate, whose ascendency 
was now, for some reason, once more estab- 
lished, prepared to prevent him by force of arms. 



74 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 65-60. 

Caesar's forbearance. He is restored to office. 

Caesar, finding that he was not sustained, gave 
up the contest, put off his robes of office, and 
went home. Two days afterward a reaction 
occurred. A mass of the populace came to- 
gether to his house, and offered their assistance 
to restore his rights and vindicate his honor. 
Caesar, however, contrary to what every one 
would have expected of him, exerted his in- 
fluence to calm and quiet the mob, and then 
sent them away, remaining himself in private 
as before. The Senate had been alarmed at 
the first outbreak of the tumult, and a meeting 
had been suddenly convened to consider what 
measures to adopt in such a crisis. When, how- 
ever, they found that Caesar had himself inter- 
posed, and by his own personal influence had 
saved the city from the danger which threat- 
ened it, they were so strongly impressed with a 
sense of his forbearance and generosity, that 
they sent for him to come to the senate house, 
and, after formally expressing their thanks, they 
canceled their former vote, and restored him to 
his office again. This change in the action of 
the Senate does not, however, necessarily indi- 
cate so great a change of individual sentiment 
as one might at first imagine. There was, un* 
doubtedly, a large minority who were opposed 



B.C. 65-60.] Made Consul. 75 

CsBsar implicated in Catiline's conspiracy. He arrests Vettius. 

to his being deposed in the first instance ; but, 
being outvoted, the decree of deposition was 
passed. Others were, perhaps, more or less 
doubtful. Caesar's generous forbearance in re- 
fusing the offered aid of the populace carried 
over a number of these sufficient to shift the 
majority, and thus the action of the body was 
reversed. It is in this way that the sudden and 
apparently total changes in the action of delib- 
erative assemblies which often take place, and 
which would otherwise, in some cases, be al- 
most incredible, are to be explained. 

After this, Caesar became involved in another 
difficulty, in consequence of the appearance of 
some definite and positive evidence that he was 
connected with Catiline in his famous conspir- 
acy. One of the senators said that Catiline 
himself had informed him that Caesar was one 
of the accomplices of the plot. Another wit- 
ness, named Vettius, laid an information against 
Caesar before a Roman magistrate, and offered 
to produce Caesar's handwriting in proof of 
his participation in the conspirator's designs. 
Caesar was very much incensed, and his manner 
of vindicating himself from these serious charges 
was as singular as many of his other deeds. He 
arrested Vettius, and sentenced him to pay a 



76 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 60. 

Caesar's embarrassment. Spain is assigned to him. 

heavy fine, and to be imprisoned ; and he con- 
trived also to expose him, in the course of the 
proceedings, to the mob in the Forum, who 
were always ready to espouse Caesar's cause, 
and who, on this occasion, beat Vettius so un- 
mercifully, that he barely escaped with his life. 
The magistrate, too, was thrown into prison for 
having dared to take an information against a 
superior officer. 

At last Caesar became so much involved in 
debt, through the boundless extravagance of his 
expenditures, that something must be done to 
replenish his exhausted finances. He had, how- 
ever, by this time, risen so high in official in- 
fluence and power, that he succeeded in having 
Spain assigned to him as his province, and he 
began to make preparations to proceed to it. 
His creditors, however, interposed, unwilling to 
let him go without giving them security. In 
this dilemma, Caesar succeeded in making an 
arrangement with Crassus, who has already 
been spoken of as a man of unbounded wealth 
and great ambition, but not possessed of any 
considerable degree of intellectual power. Cras- 
sus consented to give the necessary security, 
with an understanding that Caesar was to re- 
pay him by exerting his political influence in 



B.C. 60.] Made Consul. 77 

The Swiss hamlet. Caesar's ambition. 

his favor. So soon as this arrangement was 
made, Caesar set off in a sudden and private 
manner, as if he expected that otherwise some 
new difficulty would intervene. 

He went to Spain by land, passing through 
Switzerland on the way. He stopped with his 
attendants one night at a very insignificant vil- 
lage of shepherds' huts among the mountains. 
Struck with the poverty and worthlessness of 
all they saw in this wretched hamlet, Caesar's 
friends were wondering whether the jealousy, 
rivalry, and ambition which reigned among 
men every where else in the world could find 
any footing there, when Caesar told them that, 
for his part, he should rather choose to be first 
in such a village as that than the second at 
Rome. The story has been repeated a thousand 
times, and told to every successive generation 
now for nearly twenty centuries, as an illustra- 
tion of the peculiar type and character of the 
ambition which controls such a soul as that of 
Caesar. 

Caesar was very successful in the administra- 
tion of his province ; that is to say, he returned 
in a short time with considerable military glory, 
and with money enough to pay all his debts, and 
furnish him with means for fresh electioneering. 



78 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 59. 

Manner of choosing the consuls. Pompey and Crassus. 

He now felt strong enough to aspire to the 
office of consul, which was the highest office of 
the Roman state. When the line of kings had 
been deposed, the Romans had vested the su- 
preme magistracy hi the hands of two consuls, 
who were chosen annually in a general election, 
the formalities of which were all very carefully 
arranged. The current of popular opinion was, 
of course, in Csesar's favor, but he had many 
powerful rivals and enemies among the great, 
who, however, hated and opposed each other as 
well as him. There was at that time a very 
bitter feud between Pompey and Crassus, each 
of them struggling for power against the efforts 
of the other. Pompey possessed great influence 
through his splendid abilities and his military 
renown. Crassus, as has already been stated, 
was powerful through his wealth. Csesar, who 
had some influence with them both, now con- 
ceived the bold design of reconciling them, and 
then of availing himself of their united aid in 
accomplishing his own particular ends. 

He succeeded perfectly well in this manage- 
ment. He represented to them that, by con- 
tending against each other, they only exhausted 
their own powers, and strengthened the arms 
of their common enemies. He proposed to them 



B.C. 59.] Made Consul. 79 

The first triumvirate. Caesar a candidate for the consulship. 

to unite with one another and with him, and 
thus make common cause to promote their com- 
mon interest and advancement. They willingly 
acceded to this plan, and a triple league was ac- 
cordingly formed, in which they each bound 
themselves to promote, by every means in his 
power, the political elevation of the others, and 
not to take any public step or adopt any meas- 
ures without the concurrence of the three. 
Caesar faithfully observed the obligations of this 
league so long as he could use his two associ- 
ates to promote his own ends, and then he aban- 
doned it. 

Having, however, completed this arrange- 
ment, he was now prepared to push vigorously 
his claims to be elected consul. He associated 
with his own name that of Lucceius, who was 
a man of great wealth, and who agreed to-defray 
the expenses of the election for the sake of the 
honor of being consul with Caesar. Caesar's en- 
emies, however, knowing that they probably 
could not prevent his election, determined to 
concentrate their strength in the effort to pre- 
vent his having the colleague he desired. They 
made choice, therefore, of a certain Bibulus as 
their candidate. Bibulus had always been a 
political opponent of Caesar's, and they thought 



80 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 59. 

Caesar assumes the whole power. He imprisons Cato. 

that, by associating him with Caesar in the su- 
preme magistracy, the pride and ambition of 
their great adversary might be held somewhat in 
check. They accordingly made a contribution 
among themselves to enable Bibulus to expend 
as much money in bribery as Lucceius, and the 
canvass went on. 

It resulted in the election of Caesar and Bib- 
ulus. They entered upon the duties of their 
office; but Caesar, almost entirely disregarding 
his colleague, began to assume the whole power, 
and proposed and carried measure after measure 
of the most extraordinary character, all aiming 
at the gratification of the populace. He was at 
first opposed violently both by Bibulus and by 
many leading members of the Senate, especially 
by Cato, a stern and inflexible patriot, whom 
neither fear of danger nor hope of reward could 
move from what he regarded his duty. But 
Caesar was now getting strong enough to put 
down the opposition which he encountered with- 
out much scruple as to the means. He ordered 
Cato on one occasion to be arrested in the Sen- 
ate and sent to prison. Another influential 
member of the Senate rose and was going out 
with him. Caesar asked him where he was 
going. He said he was going with Cato. He 



B.C. 59.] Made Consul. 81 

Bibulus retires to his house. The year of " Julius and Caesar." 

would rather, he said, be with Cato in prison, 
than in the Senate with Csesar. 

Csesar treated Bibulus also with so much 
neglect, and assumed so entirely the whole con- 
trol of the consular power, to the utter exclusion 
of his colleague, that Bibulus at last, com- 
pletely discouraged and chagrined, abandoned 
all pretension to official authority, retired to 
his house, and shut himself up in perfect se- 
clusion, leaving Csesar to his own way. It was 
customary among the Romans, in their histori- 
cal and narrative writings, to designate the suc- 
cessive years, not by a numerical date as with 
us, but by the names of the consuls who held 
office in them. Thus, in the time of Csesar's 
consulship, the phrase would have been, "In the 
year of Caesar and Bibulus, consuls," according 
to the ordinary usage ; but the wags of the city, 
in order to make sport of the assumptions of 
Csesar and the insignificance of Bibulus, used 
to say, " In the year of Julius and Csesar. con- 
suls," rejecting the name of Bibulus altogether, 
and taking the two names of Csesar to make 
out the necessary duality. 

F 



82 Julius Cjssar. [B.C. 58. 

Caesar aspires to be a soldier. His success and celebrity. 



Chapter IV. 

The Conquest of Gaul. 

TN attaining to the consulship, Caesar had 
-*- reached the highest point of elevation which 
it was possible to reach as a mere citizen of 
Rome. His ambition was, however, of course, 
not satisfied. The only way to acquire higher 
distinction and to rise to higher power was to 
enter upon a career of foreign conquest. Caesar 
therefore aspired now to be a soldier. He ac- 
cordingly obtained the command of an army, 
and entered upon a course of military campaigns 
in the heart of Europe, which he continued for 
eight years. These eight years constitute one 
of the most important and strongly-marked pe- 
riods of his life. He was triumphantly suc- 
cessful in his military career, and he made, ac- 
cordingly, a vast accession to his celebrity and 
powder, in his own day, by the results of his cam- 
paigns. He also wrote, himself, an account of 
his adventures during this period, in which the 
events are recorded in so lucid and in so elo- 
quent a manner, that the narrations have con- 



B.C. 58.] Conquest of Gaul. 83 

Scenes of Caesar's exploits. Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul. 

tinued to be read by every successive genera- 
tion of scholars down to the present day, and 
they have had a great influence in extending 
and perpetuating his fame. 

The principal scenes of the exploits which 
Caesar performed during the period of this his 
first great military career, were the north of 
Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and En- 
gland, a great tract of country, nearly all of 
which he overran and conquered. A large por- 
tion of this territory was called Gaul in those 
days ; the part on the Italian side of the Alps 
being named Cisalpine Gaul, while that which 
lay beyond was designated as Transalpine. 
Transalpine Gaul was substantially what is 
now France. There was a part of Transalpine 
Gaul which had been already conquered and 
reduced to a Roman province. It was called 
The Province then, and has retained the name, 
with a slight change in orthography, to the pres- 
ent day. It is now known as Provence. 

The countries which Caesar went to invade 
were occupied by various nations and tribes, 
many of which were well organized and war- 
like, and some of them were considerably civil- 
ized and wealthy. They had extended tracts 
of cultivated land, the slopes of the hills and the 



84 Julius Cesar. 


[B.C. 58-50. 


Condition of Gaul in Caesar's day. 


Singular cavalry. 



mountain sides being formed into green pastu- 
rages, which were covered with flocks of goats, 
and sheep, and herds of cattle, while the smooth- 
er and more level tracts were adorned with 
smiling vineyards and broadly-extended fields 
of waving grain. They had cities, forts, ships, 
and armies. Their manners and customs would 
be considered somewhat rude by modern na- 
tions, and some of their usages of war were half 
barbarian. For example, in one of the nations 
which Caesar encountered, he found, as he says 
in his narrative, a corps of cavalry, as a con- 
stituent part of the army, in which, to every 
horse, there were tivo men, one the rider, and 
the other a sort of foot soldier and attendant. 
If the battle went against them, and the squad- 
ron were put to their speed in a retreat, these 
footmen would cling to the manes of the horses, 
and then, half running, half flying, they would 
be borne along over the field, thus keeping al- 
ways at the side of their comrades, and escaping 
with them to a place of safety. 

But, although the Romans were inclined to 
consider these nations as only half civilized, still 
there would be great glory, as Csesar thought, 
in subduing them, and probably great treasure 
would be secured in the conquest, both by the 



B.C. 58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 85 

CsesarVplans. His pretexts. 

plunder and confiscation of governmental prop- 
erty, and by the tribute which would be col- 
lected in taxes from the people of the countries 
subdued. Csesar accordingly placed himself at 
the head of an army of three Roman legions, 
which he contrived, by means of a great deal 
of political maneuvering and management, to 
have raised and placed under his command. 
One of these legions, which was called the tenth 
legion, was his favorite corps, on account of the 
bravery and hardihood which they often dis- 
played. At the head of these legions, Csesar 
set out for Gaul. He^was at this time not far 
from forty years of age] 

Caesar had no difficulty in finding pretexts for 
making war upon any of these various nations 
that he might desire to subdue. They were, 
of course, frequently at war with each other, 
and there were at all times standing topics of 
controversy and unsettled disputes among them. 
Caesar had, therefore, only to draw near to the 
scene of contention, and then to take sides with 
one party or the other, it mattered little with 
which, for the affair almost always resulted, in 
the end, in his making himself master of botl>) 
The manner, however, in which this sort of op- 
eration was performed, can best be illustrated 



86 Julius Caesar. [B.C.58-50. 

Ariovistus. The ^Eduans. 

by an example, and we will take for the pur- 
pose the case of Ariovistus. 

Ariovistus was a German king. He had 
been nominally a sort of ally of the Romans. 
He had extended his conquests across the Rhine 
into Gaul, and he held some nations there as 
his tributaries. Among these, the ^Eduans 
were a prominent party, and, to simplify the 
account, we will take their name as the repre- 
sentative of all who were concerned. {"When 
Caesar came into the region of the iEduans, he 
entered into some negotiations with them, in 
which they, as he alleges, asked his assistance 
to enable them to throw off the dominion of 
their German enemy. It is probable, in fact, 
that there was some proposition of this kind 
from them, for Caesar had abundant means of 
inducing them to make it, if he was disposed ; 
and the receiving of such a communication 
furnished the most obvious and plausible pre- 
text to authorize and justify his interposition. 

Caesar accordingly sent a messenger across 
the Rhine to Ariovistus, saying that he wished 
to have an interview with him on business of 
importance, and asking him to name a time 
which would be convenient to him for the inter- 
view, and also to appoint some place in Gaul 
where he would attend. 



B.C. 58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 87 

Caesar's negotiations with Ariovistus. His message. 

To this Ariovistus replied, that if he had, 
himself, any business with Caesar, he would 
have waited upon him to propose it ; and, in 
the same manner, if Csesar wished to see him, 
he must come into his own dominions. He said 
that it would not be safe for him to come into 
Gaul without an army, and that it was not con- 
venient for him to raise and equip an army for 
such a purpose at that time. 

Caesar sent again to Ariovistus to say, that 
since he was so unmindful of his obligations to 
the Roman people as to refuse an interview 
with him on business of common interest, he 
would state the particulars that he required of 
him. The JEduans, he said, were now his al- 
lies, and under his protection ; and Ariovistus 
must send back the hostages which he held from 
them, and bind himself henceforth not to send 
any more troops across the Rhine, nor make war 
upon the iEduans, or injure them in any way. 
If he complied with these terms, all would be 
well. If he did not, Csesar said that he should 
not himself disregard the just complaints of his 
allies. 

Ariovistus had no fear of Csesar. Csesar had, 
in fact, thus far, not begun to acquire the mil- 
itary renown to which he afterward attained. 



88 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 58-50. 

Ariovistus's spirited reply to Caesar. Preparations for war. 

Ariovistus had, therefore, no particular cause 
to dread his power. He sent him back word 
that he did not understand why Caesar should 
interfere between him and his conquered prov- 
ince. " The .ZEduans," said he, " tried the for- 
tune of war with me, and were overcome ; and 
they must abide the issue. The Romans man- 
age their conquered provinces as they judge 
proper, without holding themselves accountable 
to any one. I shall do the same with mine. 
All that I can sav is, that so long; as the iEdu- 
ans submit peaceably to my authority, and pay 
their tribute, I shall not molest them ; as to 
your threat that you shall not disregard their 
complaints, you must know that no one has 
ever made war upon me but to his own destruc- 
tion, and, if you wish to see how it will turn out 
in your case, you may make the experiment 
whenever you please." 

\Both parties immediately prepared for war. 
Ariovistus, instead of waiting to be attacked, 
assembled his army, crossed the Rhine, and ad- 
vanced into the territories from which Caesar 
had undertaken to exclude him. 

As Caesar, however, began to make his ar- 
rangements for putting his army in motion to 
meet his approaching enemy, there began to cir- 



B.C. 58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 89 

Panic in the Roman army. Caesar's address. 

culate throughout the camp such extraordinary- 
stories of the terrible strength and courage of 
the German soldiery as to produce a very gen- 
eral panic. So great, at length, became the 
anxiety and alarm, that even the officers were 
wholly dejected and discouraged; and as for the 
men, they were on the very eve of mutiny. 

i When Caesar understood this state of things, 
he called an assembly of the troops, and made 
an address to them. He told them that he was 
astonished to learn to what an extent an un- 
worthy despondency and fear had taken pos- 
session of their minds, and how little confidence 
they reposed in him, their general. And then, 
after some further remarks about the duty of a 
soldier to be ready to go wherever his command- 
er leads him, and presenting also some consid- 
erations in respect to the German troops with 
which they were going to contend, in order to 
show them that they had no cause to fear, he 
ended by saying that he had not been fully de- 
cided as to the time of marching, but that now 
he had concluded to give orders for setting out 
the next morning at three o'clock, that he might 
learn, as soon as possible, who were too coward- 
ly to follow him. He would go himself, he said, 
if he was attended by the tenth legion alone. 



90 Julius. Cesar. [B.C. 58-50. 

Effect of Caesar's address. Proposals for an interview. 

He was sure that they would not shrink from 
any undertaking in which he led the way. 

The soldiers, moved partly by shame, partly 
by the decisive and commanding tone which 
their general assumed, and partly reassured by 
the courage and confidence which he seemed to 
feel, laid aside their fears, and vied with each 
other henceforth in energy and ardor. The ar- 
mies approached each other. Ariovistus sent 
to Caesar, saying that now, if he wished it, he 
was ready for an interview. Caesar acceded to 
the suggestion, and the arrangements for a con- 
ference were made, each party, as usual in such 
cases, taking every precaution to guard against 
the treachery of the other. 

Between the two camps there was a rising 
ground, in the middle of an open plain, where it 
was decided that the conference should be held. 
Ariovistus proposed that neither party should 
bring any foot soldiers to the place of meeting, 
but cavalry alone ; and that these bodies of cav- 
alry, brought by the respective generals, should 
remain at the foot of the eminence on either 
side, while Caesar and Ariovistus themselves, 
attended each by only ten followers on horse- 
back, should ascend it. This plan was acceded 
to by Caesar, and a long conference was held in 



B.C.58-50.] Conquest of Gatjl. 91 

Conference between Caesar and Ariovistus. Caesar's messenger seized. 

this way between the two generals, as they sat 
upon their horses, on the summit of the hill. 

The two generals, in their discussion, only 
repeated in substance what they had said in 
their embassages before, and made no progress 
toward coming to an understanding. At length 
Csesar closed the conference and withdrew. 
Some days afterward Ariovistus sent a request 
to Caesar, asking that he would appoint another 
interview, or else that he would depute one of 
his officers to proceed to Ariovistus's camp and 
receive a communication which he wished to 
make to him. Csesar concluded not to grant 
another interview, and he did not think it pru- 
dent to send any one of his principal officers 
as an embassador, for fear that he might be 
treacherously seized and held as a hostage. He 
accordingly sent an ordinary messenger, accom- 
panied by one or two men. These men were all 
seized and put in irons as soon as they reached 
the camp of Ariovistus, and Csesar now prepared 
in earnest for giving his enemy battle. 

He proved himself as skillful and efficient in 
arranging and managing the combat as he had 
been sagacious and adroit in the negotiations 
which preceded it. Several days were spent 
in maneuvers and movements, by which each 



92 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 58-50. 

Defeat of the Germans. Release of Caesar's messenger. 

party endeavored to gain some advantage over 
the other in respect to their position in the ap- 
proaching struggle. When at length the com- 
bat came, Caesar and his legions were entirely 
and triumphantly successful. The Germans 
were put totally to flight. Their baggage and 
stores were all seized, and the troops themselves 
fled in dismay by all the roads which led back 
to the Rhine; and there those who succeeded 
in escaping death from the Romans, who pur- 
sued them all the way, embarked in boats and 
upon rafts, and returned to their homes. Ari- 
ovistus himself found a small boat, in which, 
with one or two followers, he succeeded in get- 
ting across the stream. 

As Caesar, at the head of a body of his troops, 
was pursuing the enemy in this their flight, he 
overtook one party who had a prisoner with 
them confined by iron chains fastened to his 
limbs, and whom they were hurrying rapidly 
along. This prisoner proved to be the messen- 
ger that Caesar had sent to Ariovistus's camp, 
and whom he had, as Caesar alleges, treacher- 
ously detained. Of course, he was overjoyed to 
be recaptured and set at liberty. The man 
said that three times they had drawn lots to see 
whether they should burn him alive then, or re- 



B.C. 58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 93 

Results of the victory. Caesar's continued success. 

serve the pleasure for a future occasion, and 
that every time the lot had resulted in his favor. 
The consequence of this victory was, that 
Csesar's authority was established triumphantly 
over all that part of Gaul which he had thus 
freed from Ariovistus's sway. 4 Other parts of 
the country, too, were pervaded by the fame of 
his exploits, and the people every where began 
to consider what action it would be incumbent 
on them to take, in respect to the new military 
power which had appeared so suddenly among 
them. Some nations determined to submit 
without resistance, and to seek the conqueror's 
alliance and protection. Others, more bold, 
or more confident of their strength, began to 
form combinations and to arrange plans for re- 
sisting him. But, whenever they did, the re- 
sult in the end was the same. Csesar's as- 
cendency was every where and always gaining 
ground. Of course, it is impossible in the com- 
pass of a single chapter, which is all that can 
be devoted to the subject in this volume, to 
give any regular narrative of the events of the 
eight years of Csesar's military career in Gaul. 
Marches, negotiations, battles, and victories 
mingled with and followed each other in a long 
succession, the particulars of which it would re- 



94 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 58-50. 

Account of the northern nations. Their strange customs. 

quire a volume to detail, every thing resulting 
most successfully for the increase of Caesar's 
power and the extension of his fame. 

Csesar gives, in his narrative, very extraordi- 
nary accounts of the customs and modes of life 
of some of the people that he encountered. 
There was one country, for example, in which 
all the lands were common, and the whole struc- 
ture of society was based on the plan of forming 
the community into one great martial band. 
The nation was divided into a hundred cantons, 
each containing two thousand men capable of 
bearing arms. If these were all mustered into 
service together, they would form, of course, an 
army of two hundred thousand men. It was 
customary, however, to organize only one half 
of them into an army, while the rest remained 
at home to till the ground and tend the flocks 
and herds. These two great divisions inter- 
changed their work every year, the soldiers be- 
coming husbandmen, and the husbandmen sol- 
diers. Thus they all became equally inured to 
the hardships and dangers of the camp, and to 
the more continuous but safer labors of agricul- 
tural toil. Their fields were devoted to pastur- 
age more than to tillage, for flocks and herds 
could be driven from place to place, and thus 



B.C. 58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 95 

Well-trained horses. Caesar's popularity with the army. 

more easily preserved from the depredations of 
enemies than fields of grain. The children grew 
up almost perfectly wild from infancy, and hard- 
ened themselves by bathing in cold streams, 
wearing very little clothing, and making long 
hunting excursions among the mountains. The 
people had abundance of excellent horses, which 
the young men were accustomed, from their 
earliest years, to ride without saddle or bridle, 
the horses being trained to obey implicitly every 
command. So admirably disciplined were they, 
that sometimes, in battle, the mounted men 
would leap from their horses and advance as 
foot soldiers to aid the other infantry, leaving 
the horses to stand until they returned. The 
horses would not move from the spot ; the men, 
when the object for which they had dismounted 
was accomplished, would come back, spring to 
their seats again, and once more become a squad- 
ron of cavalry. 

Although Caesar was very energetic and de- 
cided in the government of his army, he was 
extremely popular with his soldiers in all these 
campaigns. He exposed his men, of course, to 
a great many privations and hardships, but then 
he evinced, in many cases, such a willingness 
to bear his share of them, that the men were 



96 Julius Cjesae. [B.C. 58-50. 

Csesar's military habits. His bridge across the Rhine. 

very little inclined to complain. He moved at 
the head of the column when his troops were 
advancing on a march, generally on horseback, 
but often on foot ; and Suetonius says that he 
used to go bareheaded on such occasions, what- 
ever was the state of the weather, though it is 
difficult to see what the motive of this appa- 
rently needless exposure could be, unless it was 
for effect, on some special or unusual occasion. 
Caesar would ford or swim rivers with his men 
whenever there was no other mode of transit, 
sometimes supported, it was said, by bags in- 
flated with air, and placed under his arms. At 
one time he built a bridge across the Rhine, to 
enable his army to cross that river. This bridge 
was built with piles driven down into the sand, 
which supported a flooring of timbers. Caesar, 
considering it quite an exploit thus to bridge 
the Rhine, wrote a minute account of the man- 
ner in which the work was constructed, and the 
description is almost exactly in accordance with 
the principles and usages of modern carpentry. 
After the countries which were the scene of 
these conquests were pretty well subdued, Cse- 
sar established on some of the great routes of 
travel a system of posts, that is, he stationed 
supplies of horses at intervals of from ten to 



B.C.58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 97 

System of posts. Their great util#y. 

twenty miles along the way, so that he himself, 
or the officers of his army, or any couriers whom 
he might have occasion to send with dispatches, 
could travel with great speed by finding a fresh 
horse ready at every stage. By this means he 
sometimes traveled himself a hundred miles in 
a day. This system, thus adopted for military 
purposes in Caesar's time, has been continued 
in almost all countries of Europe to the present 
age, and is applied to traveling in carriages as 
well as on horseback. A family party purchase 
a carriage, and arranging within it all the com- 
forts and conveniences which they will require 
on the journey, they set out, taking these post 
horses, fresh at each village, to draw them to 
the next. Thus they can go at any rate of 
speed which they desire, instead of being limited 
in their movements by the powers of endurance 
of one set of animals, as they would be com- 
pelled to be if they w T ere to travel with their 
own. This plan has, for some reason, never 
been introduced into America, and it is now 
probable that it never will be, as the railway 
system will doubtless supersede it. 

One of the most remarkable of the enterprises 
which Csesar undertook during the period of 
these campaigns was his excursion into Great 

G 



98 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 58-50. 

Caesar's invasion of Britain. His pretext for it. 

Britain. The real motive of this expedition 
was probably a love of romantic adventure, 
and a desire to secure for himself at Rome the 
glory of having penetrated into remote regions 
which Roman armies had never reached before. 
The pretext, however, which he made to justify 
his invading the territories of the Britons was, 
that the people of the island were accustomed 
to come across the Channel and aid the Gauls 
in their wars. 

In forming his arrangements for going into 
England, the first thing was, to obtain all the 
information which was accessible in Gaul in re- 
spect to the country. There were, in those days, 
great numbers of traveling merchants, who went 
from one nation to another to purchase and sell, 
taking with them such goods as were most easy 
of transportation. These merchants, of course, 
were generally possessed of a great deal of in- 
formation in respect to the countries which they 
had visited, and Caesar called together as many 
of them as he could find, when he had reached 
the northern shores of France, to inquire about 
the modes of crossing the Channel, the harbors 
on the English side, the geographical conforma- 
tion of the country, and the military resources 
of the people. He found, however, that the 



B.C. 58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 99 

Caesar consults the merchants. Volusenua. 

merchants could give him very little informa- 
tion. They knew that Britain was an island, 
but they did not know its extent or its bounda- 
ries ; and they could tell him very little of the 
character or customs of the people. They said 
that they had only been accustomed to land 
upon the southern shore, and to transact all 
their business there, without penetrating at all 
into the interior of the country. 

Csesar then, who, though undaunted and bold 
in emergencies requiring prompt and decisive 
action, was extremely cautious and wary at all 
other times, fitted up a single ship, and, putting 
one of his officers on board with a proper crew, 
directed him to cross the Channel to the En- 
glish coast, and then to cruise along the land 
for some miles in each direction, to observe 
where were the best harbors and places for 
landing, and to examine generally the appear- 
ance of the shore. This vessel was a galley, 
manned with numerous oarsmen, well selected 
and strong, so that it could retreat with great 
speed from any sudden appearance of danger. 
The name of the officer who had the command 
of it was Volusenus. Volusenus set sail, the 
army watching his vessel with great interest as 
it moved slowlv away from the shore. He was 



100 Julius C^sah. [B.C. 58-50. 

Ceesar collects vessels. Embarkation of the troops. 

gone five days, and then returned, bringing Cae- 
sar an account of his discoveries. 

In the mean time, Caesar had collected a 
large number of sailing vessels from the whole 
line of the French shore, by means of which he 
proposed to transport his army across the Chan- 
nel. He had two legions to take into Britain, 
the remainder of his forces having been station- 
ed as garrisons in various parts of Gaul. It 
was necessary, too, to leave a considerable force 
at his post of debarkation, in order to secure a 
safe retreat in case of any disaster on the Brit- 
ish side. The number of transport ships pro- 
vided for the foot soldiers which were to be 
taken over was eighty. There were, besides 
these, eighteen more, which were appointed to 
convey a squadron of horse. This cavalry force 
were to embark at a separate port, about eighty 
miles distant from the one from which the in- 
fantry were to sail. 

At length a suitable day for the embarka- 
tion arrived ; the troops were put on board the 
ships, and orders were given to sail. The day 
could not be fixed beforehand, as the time for 
attempting to make the passage must necessa- 
rily depend upon the state of the wind and 
weather. Accordingly, when the favorable op- 



B.C.58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 101 

Sailing of the fleet. Preparations of the Britons. 

portunity arrived, and the main body of the 
army began to embark, it took some time to 
send the orders to the port where the cavalry 
had rendezvoused ; and there were, besides, 
other causes of delay which occurred to detain 
this corps, so that it turned out, as we shall 
presently see, that the foot soldiers had to act 
alone in the first attempt at landing on the 
British shore. 

It was one o'clock in the morning when the 
fleet set sail. The Britons had, in the mean 
time, obtained intelligence of Caesar's threat- 
ened invasion, and they had assembled in great 
force, with troops, and horsemen, and carriages 
of war, and were all ready to guard the shore. 
The coast, at the point where Caesar was ap- 
proaching, consists of a line of chalky cliffs, 
with valley-like openings here and there be- 
tween them, communicating with the shore, 
and sometimes narrow beaches below. When 
the Roman fleet approached the shore, Caesar 
found the cliffs every where lined with troops 
of Britons, and every accessible point below 
carefully guarded. It was now about ten 
o'clock in the morning, and Caesar, finding the 
prospect so unfavorable in respect to the prac- 
ticability of effecting a landing here, brought 



102 Julius C^jsar. [B.C. 58-50. 

Csesar calls a council of officers. The landing. 

his fleet to anchor near the shore, but far 
enough from it to be safe from the missiles of 
the enemy. 

Here he remained for several hours, to give 
time for all the vessels to join him. Some of 
them had been delayed in the embarkation, or 
had made slower progress than the rest in cross- 
ing the Channel. He called a council, too, of 
the superior officers of the army on board his 
own galley, and explained to them the plan 
which he now adopted for the landing. About 
three o'clock in the afternoon he sent these of- 
ficers back to their respective ships, and gave 
orders to make sail along the shore. The an- 
chors were raised and the fleet moved on, borne 
by the united impulse of the wind and the tide. 
The Britons, perceiving this movement, put 
themselves in motion on the land, following the 
motions of the fleet so as to be ready to meet 
their enemy wherever they might ultimately 
undertake to land. Their horsemen and car- 
riages went on in advance, and the foot soldiers 
followed, all pressing eagerly forward to keep 
up with the motion of the fleet, and to prevent 
Caesar's army from having time to land before 
they should arrive at the spot and be ready to 
oppose them. 



B.C. 58-50.] Conquest of Gaul. 105 

The battle. Defeat of the Britons. 

The fleet moved on until, at length, after 
sailing about eight miles, they came to a part 
of the coast where there was a tract of compar- 
atively level ground, which seemed to be easily 
accessible from the shore. Here Caesar de- 
termined to attempt to land ; and drawing up 
his vessel, accordingly, as near as possible to the 
beach, he ordered the men to leap over into the 
water, with their weapons in their hands. The 
Britons were all here to oppose them, and a 
dreadful struggle ensued, the combatants dyeing 
the waters with their blood as they fought, half 
submerged in the surf which rolled in upon the 
sand. Some galleys rowed up at the same time 
near to the shore, and the men on board of them 
attacked the Britons from the decks, by the 
darts and arrows which they shot to the land. 
Caesar at last prevailed ; the Britons were driven 
away, and the Roman army established them- 
selves in quiet possession of the shore. 

Caesar had afterward a great variety of ad- 
ventures, and many narrow escapes from immi- 
nent dangers in Britain, and, though he gained 
considerable glory by thus penetrating into such 
remote and unknown regions, there was very 
little else to be acquired. The glory, however, 
was itself of great value to Caesar. During the 



106 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 58-50. 

Caesar's popularity at Rome. Results of his campaigns. 

whole period of his campaigns in Gaul, Rome, 
and all Italy in fact, had been filled with the 
fame of his exploits, and the expedition into 
Britain added not a little to his renown. The 
populace of the city were greatly gratified to 
hear of the continued success of their former fa- 
vorite. They decreed to him triumph after 
triumph, and were prepared to welcome him, 
whenever he should return, with greater hon- 
ors and more extended and higher powers than 
he had ever enjoyed before. 

Caesar's exploits in these campaigns were, in 
fact, in a military point of view, of the most 
magnificent character. Plutarch, in summing 
up the results of them, says that he took eight 
hundred cities, conquered three hundred na- 
tions, fought pitched battles at separate times 
with three millions of men, took one million of 
prisoners, and killed another million on the field. 
What a vast work of destruction was this for a 
man to spend eight years of his life in perform- 
ing upon his fellow-creatures, merely to gratify 
his insane love of dominion. 



B.C. 106.] Pompey. 107 

Pouipey. His birth. 



Chapter V. 

Pompey, 

"YT^TTHILE Caesar had thus been rising to so 
* ' high an elevation, there was another 
Roman general who had been, for nearly the 
same period, engaged, in various other quar- 
ters of the world, in acquiring, by very similar 
means, an almost equal renown. This general 
was Pompey. He became, in the end, Caesar's 
great and formidable rival. In order that the 
reader may understand clearly the nature of the 
great contest which sprung up at last between 
these heroes, we must now go back and relate 
some of the particulars of Pompey's individual 
history down to the time of the completion of 
Caesar's conquests in Gaul. 

Pompey was a few years older than Caesar, 
having been born in 106 B.C. His father was 
a Roman general, and the young Pompey was 
brought up in camp. He was a young man of 
very handsome figure and countenance, and 
of very agreeable manners. His hair curled 
slightly over his forehead, and he had a dark 



108 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 106. 

Pompey's personal appearance. Plan to assassinate him. 

and intelligent eye, full of vivacity and mean- 
ing. There was, besides, in the expression of 
his face, and in his air and address, a certain 
indescribable charm, which prepossessed every 
one strongly in his favor, and gave him, from 
his earliest years, a great personal ascendency 
over all who knew him. 

Notwithstanding this popularity, however, 
Pompey did not escape, even in very early life, 
incurring his share of the dangers which seemed 
to environ the path of every public man in those 
distracted times. It will be recollected that, in 
the contests between Marius and Sylla, Csesar 
had joined the Marian faction. Pompey^ fa- 
ther, on the other hand, had connected himself 
with that of Sylla. At one time, in the midst 
of these wars, when Pompey was very young, 
a conspiracy was formed to assassinate his fa- 
ther by burning him in his tent, and Pompey's 
comrade, named Terentius, who slept in the 
same tent with him, had been bribed to kill 
Pompey himself at the same time, by stabbing 
him in his bed. Pompey contrived to discover 
this plan, but, instead of being at all discom- 
posed by it, he made arrangements for a guard 
about his father's tent, and then went to supper 
as usual with Terentius, conversing with him 



B.C. 90-80.] Pompey. 109 

Pompey' s adventures and escapes. Death of his father. 

all the time in even a more free and friendly 
manner than usual. That night he arranged 
his bed so as to make it appear as if he was in 
it, and then stole away. When the appointed 
hour arrived, Terentius came into the tent, and, 
approaching the couch where he supposed Pom- 
pey was lying asleep, stabbed it again and again, 
piercing the coverlets in many places, but doing 
no harm, of course, to his intended victim. 

In the course of the wars between Marius 
and Sylla, Pompey passed through a great va- 
riety of scenes, and met with many extraordi- 
nary adventures and narrow escapes, which, 
however, can not be here particularly detailed. 
His father, who was as much hated by his sol- 
diers as the son was beloved, was at last, one 
day, struck by lightning in his tent. The sol- 
diers were inspired with such a hatred for his 
memory, in consequence, probably, of the cru- 
elties and oppressions which they had suffered 
from him, that they would not allow his body 
to be honored with the ordinary funeral obse- 
quies. They pulled it off from the bier on 
which it was to have been borne to the funeral 
pile, and dragged it ignominiously away. Pom- 
pey's father was accused, too, after his death, 
of having converted some public moneys which 



110 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 90-80. 

Pompey appears in his father's defense. His success as a general. 

had been committed to his charge to his own 
use, and Pompey appeared in the Roman Fo- 
rum as an advocate to defend him from the 
charge and to vindicate his memory. He was 
very successful in this defense. All who heard 
it were, in the first instance, very deeply inter- 
ested in favor of the speaker, on account of his 
extreme youth and his personal beauty; and, 
as he proceeded with his plea, he argued with 
so much eloquence and power as to win univer- 
sal applause. One of the chief officers of the 
government in the city was so much pleased 
with his appearance, and with the promise of 
future greatness which the circumstances indi- 
cated, that he offered him his daughter in mar- 
riage. Pompey accepted the offer, and married 
the lady. Her name was Antistia. 

Pompey rose rapidly to higher and higher de- 
grees of distinction, until he obtained the com- 
mand of an army, which he had, in fact, in a 
great measure raised and organized himself, and 
he fought at the head of it with great energy 
and success against the enemies of Sylla. At 
length he was hemmed in on the eastern coast 
of Italy by three separate armies, which were 
gradually advancing against him, with a cer- 
tainty, as they thought, of effecting his destruc- 



B.C. 90-80.] Pompey. Ill 

Pompey defeats the armies. His rising fame. 

tion. Sylla, hearing of Pompey's danger, made 
great efforts to march to his rescue. Before he 
reached the place, however, Pompey had met 
and defeated one after another of the armies of 
his enemies, so that, when Sylla approached, 
Pompey marched out to meet him with his army 
drawn up in magnificent array, trumpets sound- 
ing and banners flying, and with large bodies of 
disarmed troops, the prisoners that he had taken, 
in the rear. Sylla was struck with surprise and 
admiration ; and when Pompey saluted him 
with the title of Imperator, which was the high- 
est title known to the Roman constitution, and 
the one which Sylla's lofty rank and unbounded 
power might properly claim, Sylla returned the 
compliment by conferring this great mark of 
distinction on him. 

Pompey proceeded to Rome, and the fame of 
his exploits, the singular fascination of his person 
and manners, and the great favor with Sylla 
that he enjoyed, raised him to a high degree of 
distinction. He was not, however, elated with 
the pride and vanity which so young a man 
would be naturally expected to exhibit under 
such circumstances. He was, on the contrary, 
modest and unassuming, and he acted in all re- 
spects in such a manner as to gain the appro- 



112 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 83. 

Pompey's modesty. An example. 

bation and the kind regard of all who knew him, 
as well as to excite their applause. There was 
an old general at this time in Gaul — for all these 
events took place long before the time of Caesar's 
campaigns in that country, and, in fact, before 
the commencement of his successful career in 
Rome — whose name was Metellus, and who, 
either on account of his advancing age, or for 
some other reason, was very inefficient and un- 
successful in his government. Sylla proposed 
to supersede him by sending Pompey to take 
his place. Pompey replied that it was not right 
to take the command from a man who was so 
much his superior in age and character, but 
that, if Metellus wished for his assistance in the 
management of his command, he would proceed 
to Gaul and render him every service in his 
power. When this answer was reported to Me- 
tellus, he wrote to Pompey to come. Pompey 
accordingly went to Gaul, where he obtained 
new victories, and gained new and higher honors 
than before. 

These, and various anecdotes which the an- 
cient historians relate, would lead us to form 
very favorable ideas of Pompey's character. 
Some other circumstances, however, which oc- 
curred, seem to furnish different indications. 



B.C. 83.] Pompey. 113 

Pompey divorces his wife. He marries Sylla's daughter-in-law. 

For example, on his return to Rome, some time 
after the events above related, Sylla, whose es- 
timation of Pompey's character and of the im- 
portance of his services seemed continually to 
increase, wished to connect him with his own 
family by marriage. He accordingly proposed 
that Pompey should divorce his wife Antistia, 
and marry ^Emilia, the daughter-in-law of Syl- 
la. .ZEmilia was already the wife of another 
man, from whom she would have to be taken 
away to make her the wife of Pompey. This, 
however, does not seem to have been thought 
a very serious difficulty in the way of the ar- 
rangement. Pompey's wife was put away, and 
the wife of another man taken in her place. 
Such a deed was a gross violation not merely 
of revealed and written law, but of those uni- 
versal instincts of right and wrong which are 
implanted indelibly in all human hearts. It 
ended, as might have been expected, most dis- 
astrously. Antistia was plunged, of course, 
into the deepest distress. Her father had re- 
cently lost his life on account of his supposed 
attachment to Pompey. Her mother killed 
herself in the anguish and despair produced by 
the misfortunes of her family ; and ^Emilia, 
the new wife, died suddenly, on the occasion 

H 



114 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 80-70. 

Pompey's success in Africa. Attachment of his soldiers. 

of the birth of a child, a very short time after 
her marriage with Pompey. 

These domestic troubles did not, however, 
interpose any serious obstacle to Pompey's prog- 
ress in his career of greatness and glory. Syl- 
la sent him on one great enterprise after anoth- 
er, in all of which Pompey acquitted himself 
in an admirable manner. Among his other 
campaigns, he served for some time in Africa 
with great success. He returned in due time 
from this expedition, loaded with military hon- 
ors. His soldiers had become so much attach- 
ed to him that there was almost a mutiny in 
the army when he was ordered home. They 
were determined to submit to no authority but 
that of Pompey. Pompey at length succeeded, 
by great efforts, in subduing this spirit, and 
bringing back the army to their duty. A false 
account of the affair, however, went to Rome. 
It was reported to Sylla that there was a revolt 
in the army of Africa, headed by Pompey him- 
self, who was determined not to resign his com- 
mand. Sylla was at first very indignant that 
his authority should be despised and his power 
braved, as he expressed it, by " such a boy;" 
for Pompey was still, at this time, very young. 
When, however, he learned the truth, he con- 



B.C. 80-70.] Pompey. 115 

Pompey's title of "Great," He demands a triumph. 

ceived a higher admiration for the young gen- 
eral than ever. He went out to meet him as 
he approached the city, and, in accosting him, 
he called him Pompey the Great. Pompey has 
continued to bear the title thus given him to 
the present day. 

Pompey began, it seems, now to experience, 
in some degree, the usual effects produced upon 
the human heart by celebrity and praise. He 
demanded a triumph. A triumph was a great 
and splendid ceremony, by which victorious gen- 
erals, who were of advanced age and high civil 
or. military rank, were received into the city 
when returning from any specially glorious cam- 
paign. There was a grand procession formed 
on these occasions, in which various emblems 
and insignia, and trophies of victory, and cap- 
tives taken by the conqueror, were displayed. 
This great procession entered the city with 
bands of music accompanying it, and flags and 
banners flying, passing under triumphal arches 
erected along the way. Triumphs were usual- 
ly decreed by a vote of the Senate, in cases 
where they were deserved ; but, in this case, 
Sylla's power as dictator was supreme, and 
Pompey's demand for a triumph seems to have 
been addressed accordingly to him. 



116 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 80-70. 

Sylla refuses Pompey a triumph. But at last consents. 

Sylla refused it. Pompey's performances in 
the African campaign had been, he admitted, 
very creditable to him, but he had neither the 
age nor the rank to justify the granting him a 
triumph. To bestow such an honor upon one 
so young and in such a station, would only 
bring the honor itself, he said, into disrepute, 
and degrade, also, his dictatorship for suffer- 
ing it. 

To this Pompey replied, speaking, however, 
in an under tone to those around him in the as- 
sembly, that Sylla need not fear that the tri- 
umph would be unpopular, for people were much 
more disposed to worship a rising than a setting 
sun. Sylla did not hear this remark, but, per- 
ceiving by the countenances of the by-standers 
that Pompey had said something which seemed 
to please them, he asked what it was. When 
the remark was repeated to him, he seemed 
pleased himself with its justness or with its 
wit, and said, " Let him have his triumph." 

The arrangements were accordingly made, 
Pompey ordering every thing necessary to be 
prepared for a most magnificent procession. He 
learned that some persons in the city, envious 
at his early renown, were displeased with his 
triumph ; this only awakened in him a determ- 



B.C. 80-70.] Pompey. • 117 

Pompey's triumph. His course of conduct at Rome. 

ination to make it still more splendid and im- 
posing. He had brought some elephants with 
him from Africa, and he formed a plan for hav- 
ing the car in which he was to ride in the pro- 
cession drawn by four of these huge beasts as 
it entered the city ; but, on measuring the gate, 
it was found not wide enough to admit such a 
team, and the plan was accordingly abandoned. 
The conqueror's car was drawn by horses in 
the usual manner, and the elephants followed 
singly, with the other trophies, to grace the 
train. 

Pompey remained some time after this in 
Rome, sustaining from time to time various of- 
fices of dignity and honor. His services were 
often called for to plead causes in the Forum, 
and he performed this duty, whenever he un- 
dertook it, with great success. He, however, 
seemed generally inclined to retire somewhat 
from intimate intercourse with the mass of the 
community, knowing very well that if he was 
engaged often in the discussion of common 
questions with ordinary men, he should soon 
descend in public estimation from the high po- 
sition to which his military renown had raised 
him. He accordingly accustomed himself to 
appear but little in public, and, when he did so 



118 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 67. 

The Cilician pirates. Their increasing depredations. 

appear, he was generally accompanied by a 
large retinue of armed attendants, at the head 
of which he moved about the city in great state, 
more like a victorious general in a conquered 
province than like a peaceful citizen exercising 
ordinary official functions in a community gov- 
erned by law. This was a very sagacious 
course, so far as concerned the attainment of 
the great objects of future ambition. Pompey 
knew very well that occasions would probably 
arise in which he could act far more effectually 
for the promotion of his own greatness and 
fame than by mingling in the ordinary munic- 
ipal contests of the city. 

At length, in fact, an occasion came. In 
the year B.C. 67, which was about the time 
that Csesar commenced his successful career in 
rising to public office in Rome, as is described 
in the third chapter of this volume, the Cilician 
pirates, of whose desperate character and bold 
exploits something has already been said, had 
become so powerful, and were increasing so rap- 
idly in the extent of their depredations, that 
the Roman people felt compelled to adopt some 
very vigorous measures for suppressing them. 
The pirates had increased in numbers during 
the wars between Marius and Sylla in a very 



B.C. 67.] Pompey. 119 

Ships and fortresses of the Cilicians. Their conquests. 

alarming degree. They had built, equipped, 
and organized whole fleets. They had various 
fortresses, arsenals, ports, and watch-towers all 
along the coasts of the Mediterranean. They 
had also extensive warehouses, built in secure 
and secluded places, where they stored their 
plunder. Their fleets were well manned, and 
provided with skillful pilots, and with ample 
supplies of every kind ; and they were so well 
constructed, both for speed and safety, that no 
other ships could be made to surpass them. 
Many of them, too, were adorned and decora- 
ted in the most sumptuous manner, with gild- 
ed sterns, purple awnings, and silver-mounted 
oars. The number of their galleys was said to 
be a thousand. With this force they made 
themselves almost complete masters of the sea. 
They attacked not only separate ships, but 
whole fleets of merchantmen sailing under con- 
voy ; and they increased the difficulty and ex- 
pense of bringing grain to Rome so much, by 
intercepting the supplies, as very materially to 
enhance the price and to threaten a scarcity. 
They made themselves masters of many isl- 
ands and of various maritime towns along the 
coast, until they had four hundred ports and 
cities in their possession. In fact, they had 



120 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 67. 

Plan for destroying the pirates. Its magnitude. 

gone so far toward forming themselves into a 
regular maritime power, under a systematic 
and legitimate government, that very respecta- 
ble young men from other countries began to 
enter their service, as one opening honorable av- 
enues to wealth and fame. 

Under these circumstances, it was obvious 
that something decisive must be done. A friend 
of Pompey's brought forward a plan for com- 
missioning some one, he did not say whom, 
but every one understood that Pompey was in- 
tended, to be sent forth against the pirates, 
with extraordinary powers, such as should be 
amply sufficient to enable him to bring their 
dominion to an end. He was to have supreme 
command upon the sea, and also upon the land 
for fifty miles from the shore. He was, more- 
over, to be empowered to raise as large a force, 
both of ships and men, as he should think re- 
quired, and to draw from the treasury whatev- 
er funds were necessary to defray the enormous 
expenses which so vast an undertaking would 
involve. If the law should pass creating this 
office, and a person be designated to fill it, it is 
plain that such a commander would be clothed 
with enormous powers; but then he would in- 
cur, on the other hand, a vast and commensu- 



B.C. 67.] Pompey. 121 

Porapey appointed to the command. Fall in the price of grain. 

rate responsibility, as the Roman people would 
hold him rigidly accountable for the full and 
perfect accomplishment of the work he under- 
took, after they had thus surrendered every pos- 
sible power necessary to accomplish it so un- 
conditionally into his hands. 

There was a great deal of maneuvering, man- 
agement, and debate on the one hand to effect 
the passage of this law, and, on the other, to de- 
feat it. Caesar, who, though not so prominent 
yet as Pompey, was now rising rapidly to in- 
fluence and power, was in favor of the meas- 
ure, because, as is said, he perceived that the 
people were pleased with it. It was at length 
adopted. Pompey was then designated to fill 
the office which the law created. He accepted 
the trust, and began to prepare for the vast un- 
dertaking. The price of grain fell immediately 
in Rome, as soon as the appointment of Pom- 
pey was made known, as the merchants, who 
had large supplies in the granaries there, were 
now eager to sell, even at a reduction, feeling 
confident that Pompey's measures would result 
in bringing in abundant supplies. The people, 
surprised at this sudden relaxation of the press- 
ure of their burdens, said that the very name 
of Pompey had put an end to the war. 



122 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 67. 

Pompey's complete success. His mode of operation. 

They were not mistaken in their anticipa- 
tions of Pompey's success. He freed the Med- 
iterranean from pirates in three months, by 
one systematic and simple operation, which af- 
fords one of the most striking examples of the 
power of united and organized effort, planned 
and conducted by one single master mind, which 
the history of ancient or modern times has re- 
corded. The manner in which this work was 
effected was this : 

Pompey raised and equipped a vast number 
of galleys, and divided them into separate fleets, 
putting each one under the command of a lieu- 
tenant. He then divided the Mediterranean 
Sea into thirteen districts, and appointed a 
lieutenant and his fleet for each one of them 
as a guard. After sending these detachments 
forth to their respective stations, he set out 
from the city- himself to take charge of the op- 
erations which he was to conduct in person. 
The people followed him, as he went to the 
place where he was to embark, in great crowds, 
and with long and loud acclamations. 

Beginning at the Straits of Gibraltar, Pom- 
pey cruised with a powerful fleet toward the 
east, driving the pirates before him, the lieu- 
tenants, who were stationed along the coast, 



B.C. 67.] Pompey. 123 

Pompey drives the pirates before him. Exultation at Rome. 

being on the alert to prevent them from finding 
any places of retreat or refuge. Some of the 
pirates' ships were surrounded and taken. Oth- 
ers fled, and were followed by Pompey's ships 
until they had passed beyond the coasts of Sic- 
ily, and the seas between the Italian and Afri- 
can shores. The communication was now open 
again to the grain-growing countries south of 
Rome, and large supplies of food were immedi- 
ately poured into the city. The whole popula- 
tion was, of course, filled with exultation and 
joy at receiving such welcome proofs that Pom- 
pey was successfully accomplishing the work 
they had assigned him. 

The Italian peninsula and the island of Sic- 
ily, forming a sort of projection from the north- 
ern shores of the Mediterranean, and a salient 
angle of the coast nearly opposite to them on 
the African side, form a sort of strait which di- 
vides this great sea into two separate bodies of 
water, and the pirates were now driven entire- 
ly out of the western division. Pompey sent 
his principal fleet after them, with orders to 
pass around the island of Sicily and the south- 
ern part of Italy to Brundusium, which was the 
great port on the western side of Italy. He 
himself was to cross the peninsula by land, tak- 



124 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 62. 

The pirates concentrate themselves. Some of them surrender 

ing Rome in his way, and afterward to join the 
fleet at Brundusium. The pirates, in the mean 
time, so far as they had escaped Pompey's 
cruisers, had retreated to the seas in the neigh- 
borhood of Cilicia, and were concentrating theii 
forces there in preparation for the final struggle. 

Pompey was received at Rome w T ith the ut- 
most enthusiasm. The people came out in 
throngs to meet him as he approached the city, 
and welcomed him with loud acclamations. He 
did not, however, remain in the city to enjoy 
these honors. He procured, as soon as possible, 
what was necessary for the further prosecution 
of his work, and went on. He found his fleet 
at Brundusium, and, immediately embarking, 
he put to sea. 

Pompey went on to the completion of his 
work with the same vigor and decision which 
he had displayed in the commencement of it. 
Some of the pirates, finding themselves hemmed 
in within narrower and narrower limits, gave up 
the contest, and came and surrendered. Pom- 
pey, instead of punishing them severely for their 
crimes, treated them, and their wives and chil- 
dren, who fell likewise into his power, with great 
humanity. This induced many others to follow 
their example, so that the number that remained 



B.C. 62.] Pompey. 125 

A great battie. Disposal of the pirates. 

resisting to the end was greatly reduced. There 
were, however, after all these submissions, a 
body of stern and indomitable desperadoes left, 
who were incapable of yielding. These retreat- 
ed, with all the forces which they could retain, 
to their strong-holds on the Silician shores, 
sending their wives and children back to still 
securer retreats among the fastnesses of the 
mountains. 

Pompey followed them, hemming them in 
with the squadrons of armed galleys which he 
brought up around them, thus cutting off from 
them all possibility of escape. Here, at length, 
a great final battle was fought, and the domin- 
ion of the pirates was ended forever. Pompey 
destroyed their ships, dismantled their fortifica- 
tions, restored the harbors and towns which they 
had seized to their rightful owners, and sent 
the pirates themselves, with their wives and 
children, far into the interior of the country, 
and established them as agriculturists and 
herdsmen there, in a territory which he set 
apart for the purpose, where they might live in 
peace on the fruits of their own industry, with- 
out the possibility of again disturbing the com- 
merce of the seas. 

Instead of returning to Rome after these ex- 



126 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 50. 

Pompey's conquests in Asia Minor. His magnificent triumph. 

ploits, Pompey obtained new powers from the 
government of the city, and pushed his way into 
Asia Minor, where he remained several years, 
pursuing a similar career of conquest to that 
of Caesar in Gaul. At length he returned to 
Rome, his entrance into the city being sig- 
nalized by a most magnificent triumph. The 
procession for displaying the trophies, the cap- 
tives, and the other emblems of victory, and for 
conveying the vast accumulation of treasures 
and spoils, was two days in passing into the 
city ; and enough was left after all for another 
triumph. Pompey was, in a word, on the very 
summit of human grandeur and renown. 

He found, however, an old enemy and rival 
at Rome. This was Crassus, who had been 
Pompey's opponent in earlier times, and who 
now renewed his hostility. In the contest that 
ensued, Pompey relied on his renown, Crassus 
on his wealth. Pompey attempted to please the 
people by combats of lions and of elephants 
which he had brought home from his foreign 
campaigns ; Crassus courted their favor by dis- 
tributing corn among them, and inviting them 
to public feasts on great occasions. He spread 
for them, at one time, it was said, ten thousand 
tables. All Rome was filled with the feuds of 



B.C. 50.] Pompey. 127 

The first triumvirate. Pompey's wife Julia. 

these great political foes. It was at this time 
that Caesar returned from Spain, and had the 
adroitness, as has already been explained, to ex- 
tinguish these feuds, and reconcile these appa- 
rently implacable foes. He united them to- 
gether, and joined them with himself in a triple 
league, which is celebrated in Roman history 
as the first triumvirate. The rivalry, however, 
of these great aspirants for power was only sup- 
pressed and concealed, without being at all 
weakened or changed. The death of Crassus 
soon removed him from the stage. Csesar and 
Pompey continued afterward, for some time, 
an ostensible alliance. Csesar attempted to 
strengthen this bond by giving Pompey his 
daughter Julia for his wife. Julia, though so 
young — even her father was six years younger 
than Pompey — was devotedly attached to her 
husband, and. he was equally fond of her. She 
formed, in fact, a strong bond of union between 
the two great conquerors as long as she lived. 
One day, however, there was a riot at an elec- 
tion, and men were killed so near to Pompey 
that his robe was covered with blood. He 
changed it ; the servants carried home the 
bloody garment which he had taken off, and 
Julia was so terrified at the sight, thinking that 



128 Julius C^esar. [B.C. 50. 

Pompey and Csesar open enemies. Their ambition. 

her husband had been killed, that she fainted, 
and her constitution suffered very severely by 
the shock. She lived some time afterward, but 
finally died under circumstances which indicate 
that this occurrence was the cause. Pompey 
and Csesar now soon became open enemies. 
The ambitious aspirations which each of them 
cherished were so vast, that the world was not 
wide enough for them both to be satisfied. 
They had assisted each other up the ascent 
which they had been so many years in climb- 
ing, but now they had reached very near to the 
summit, and the question was to be decided 
which of the two should have his station there. 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 129 

The Rubicon. Its insignificance as a stream. 



Chapter VI. 

Crossing- the Rubicon. 

rilHERE was a little stream in ancient times, 
-*- in the north of Italy, which flowed west- 
ward into the Adriatic Sea, called the Rubicon. 
This stream has been immortalized by the trans- 
actions which we are now about to describe. 

The Rubicon was a very important bounda- 
ry, and yet it was in itself so small and insig- 
nificant that it is now impossible to determine 
which of two or three little brooks here running 
into the sea is entitled to its name and re- 
nown. In history the Rubicon is a grand, per- 
manent, and conspicuous stream, gazed upon 
with continued interest by all mankind for near- 
ly twenty centuries ; in nature it is an uncer* 
tain rivulet, for a long time doubtful and unde- 
termined, and finally lost. 

The Rubicon originally derived its import- 
ance from the fact that it was the boundary be- 
tween all that part of the north of Italy which 
is formed by the valley of the Po, one of the 
richest and most magnificent countries of the 

I 



130 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 50. 

Importance of the Rubicon as a boundary. 

world, and the more southern Roman territo- 
ries. This country of the Po constituted what 
was in those days called the hither Gaul, and 
was a Roman province. It belonged now to 
Caesar's jurisdiction, as the commander in Gaul. 
All south of the Rubicon was territory reserved 
for the immediate jurisdiction of the city. The 
Romans, in order to protect themselves from 
any danger which might threaten their own 
liberties from the immense armies which they 
raised for the conquest of foreign nations, had 
imposed on every side very strict limitations 
and restrictions in respect to the approach of 
these armies to the Capitol. The Rubicon was 
the limit on this northern side. Generals com- 
manding in Gaul were never to pass it. To 
cross the Rubicon with an army on the way to 
Rome was rebellion and treason. Hence the 
Rubicon became, as it were, the visible sign 
and symbol of civil restriction to military power. 
As Caesar found the time of his service in 
Gaul drawing toward a conclusion, he turned 
his thoughts more and more toward Rome, en- 
deavoring to strengthen his interest there by 
every means in his power, and to circumvent 
and thwart the designs of Pompey. He had 
agents and partisans in Rome who acted for 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 131 

Caesar's expenditures of money at Rome. His influence. 

him and in his name. He sent immense sums 
of money to these men, to be employed in such 
ways as would most tend to secure the favor 
of the people. He ordered the Forum to be re- 
built with great magnificence. He arranged 
great celebrations, in which the people were en- 
tertained with an endless succession of games, 
spectacles, and public feasts. When his daugh- 
ter Julia, Pompey's wife, died, he celebrated 
her funeral with indescribable splendor. He 
distributed corn in immense quantities among 
the people, and he sent a great many captives 
home, to be trained as gladiators, to fight in the 
theaters for their amusement. In many cases, 
too, where he found men of talents and influ- 
ence among the populace, who had become in- 
volved in debt by their dissipations and extrav- 
agance, he paid their debts, and thus secured 
their influence on his side. Men were astound- 
ed at the magnitude of these expenditures, and, 
while the multitude rejoiced thoughtlessly in 
the pleasures thus provided for them, the more 
reflecting and considerate trembled at the great- 
ness of the power which was so rapidly rising 
to overshadow the land. 

It increased their anxiety to observe that 
Pompey was gaining the same kind of influ- 



132 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 50. 

Pompey's personal popularity. Public thanksgiving in his behalf. 

ence and ascendency too. He had not the ad- 
vantage which Csesar enjoyed in the prodig- 
ious wealth obtained from the rich countries 
over which Caesar ruled, but he possessed, in- 
stead of it, the advantage of being all the time 
at Rome, and of securing, by his character and 
action there, a very wide personal popularity 
and influence. Pompey was, in fact, the idol 
of the people. At one time, when he was ab- 
sent from Rome, at Naples, he was taken sick. 
After being for some days in considerable dan- 
ger, the crisis passed favorably, and he recov- 
ered. Some of the people of Naples proposed 
a public thanksgiving to the gods, to celebrate 
his restoration to health. The plan was adopt- 
ed by acclamation, and the example, thus set, 
extended from city to city, until it had spread 
throughout Italy, and the whole country was 
filled with the processions, games, shows, and 
celebrations, which were instituted every where 
in honor of the event. And when Pompey re- 
turned from Naples to Rome, the towns on the 
way could not afford room for the crowds that 
came forth to meet him. The high roads, the 
villages, the ports, says Plutarch, were filled 
with sacrifices and entertainments. Many re- 
ceived him with garlands on their heads and 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 133 

Pompey's estimate of Caesar's power. Plans of the latter. 

torches in their hands, and, as they conducted 
him along, strewed the way with flowers. 

In fact, Pompey considered himself as stand- 
ing far above Caesar in fame and power, and 
this general burst of enthusiasm and applause, 
educed by his recovery from sickness, confirmed 
him in this idea. He felt no solicitude, he said, 
in respect to Caesar. He should take no special 
precautions against any hostile designs which 
he might entertain on his return from Gaul. 
It was he himself, he said, that had raised 
Caesar up to whatever of elevation he had at- 
tained, and he could put him down even more 
easily than he had exalted him. 

In the mean time, the period was drawing 
near in which Caesar's command iii the prov- 
inces was to expire ; and, anticipating the 
struggle with Pompey which was about to en- 
sue, he conducted several of his legions through 
the passes of the Alps, and advanced gradually, 
as he had a right to do, across the country of 
the Po toward the Rubicon, revolving in his ca- 
pacious mind, as he came, the various plans by 
which he might hope to gain the ascendency 
over the power of his mighty rival, and make 
himself supreme. 

He concluded that it would be his wisest 



134 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 50. 

Caesar arrives at Ravenna. Pompey's demands. 

policy not to attempt to intimidate Pompey by 
great and open preparations for war, which 
might tend to arouse him to vigorous measures 
of resistance, but rather to cover and conceal 
his designs, and thus throw his enemy off his 
guard. He advanced, therefore, toward the Ru- 
bicon with a small force. He established his 
headquarters at Ravenna, a city not far from 
the river, and employed himself in objects of 
local interest there, in order to avert as much as 
possible the minds of the people from imagining 
that he was contemplating any great design. 
Pompey sent to him to demand the return of 
a certain legion which he had lent him from 
his own army at a time when they were friends. 
Csesar complied with this demand without any 
hesitation, and sent the legion home. He sent 
with this legion, also, some other troops which 
were properly his own, thus evincing a degree 
of indifference in respect to the amount of the 
force retained under his command which seem- 
ed wholly inconsistent with the idea that he 
contemplated any resistance to the authority of 
the government at Rome. 

In the mean time, the struggle at Rome be- 
tween the partisans of Ccesar and Pompey grew 
more and more violent and alarming. Caesar, 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 135 

Cassar demands to be made consul. Excitement in consequence. 

through his friends in the city, demanded to be 
elected consul. The other side insisted that he 
must first, if that was his wish, resign the com- 
mand of his army, come to Rome, and present 
himself as a candidate in the character of a pri- 
vate citizen. This the constitution of the state 
very properly required. In answer to this req- 
uisition, Caesar rejoined, that, if Pompey would 
lay down his military commands, he would do 
so too ; if not, it was unjust to require it of him. 
The services, he added, which he had performed 
for his country, demanded some recompense, 
which, moreover, they ought to be willing to 
award, even if, in order to do it, it were neces- 
sary to relax somewhat in his favor the strict- 
ness of ordinary rules. To a large part of the 
people of the city these demands of Csesar ap- 
peared reasonable. They were clamorous to 
have them allowed. The partisans of Pompey, 
with the stern and inflexible Cato at their head, 
deemed them wholly inadmissible, and contend- 
ed with the most determined violence against 
them. The whole city was filled with the ex- 
citement of this struggle, into which all the ac- 
tive and turbulent spirits of the capital plunged 
with the most furious zeal, while the more con- 
siderate and thoughtful of the population, re- 



VS6 Julius Cjf.sar. [B.C. 50. 

Debates in the Senate. Tumult and confusion. 

membering the days of Marius and Sylla, trem- 
bled at the impending danger. Pompey himself 
had no fear. He urged the Senate to resist to 
the utmost all of Caesar's claims, saying, if Cae- 
sar should be so presumptuous as to attempt to 
march to Rome, he could raise troops enough 
by stamping with his foot to put him down. 

It would require a volume to contain a full 
account of the disputes and tumults, the ma- 
neuvers and debates, the votes and decrees which 
marked the successive stages of this quarrel. 
Pompey himself was all the time without the 
city. He was in command of an army there, 
and no general, while in command, was allow- 
ed to come within the gates. At last an ex- 
citing debate was broken up in the Senate by 
one of the consuls rising to depart, saying that 
he would hear the subject discussed no longer. 
The time had arrived for action, and he should 
send a commander, with an armed force, to de- 
fend the country from Caesar's threatened in- 
vasion. Caesar's leading friends, two tribunes 
of the people, disguised themselves as slaves, 
and fled to the north to join their master. The 
country was filled with commotion and panic. 
The Commonwealth had obviously more fear 
of Caesar than confidence in Pompey. The 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 137 

Panic at Rome. Caesar at Ravenna. 

country was full of rumors in respect to Cae- 
sar's power, and the threatening attitude which 
he was assuming, while they who had insisted 
on resistance seemed, after all, to have provid- 
ed very inadequate means with which to resist. 
A thousand plans were formed, and clamorously 
insisted upon by their respective advocates, for 
averting the danger. This only added to the 
confusion, and the city became at length per- 
vaded with a universal terror. 

While this was the state of things at Rome, 
Csesar was quietly established at Ravenna, 
thirty or forty miles from the frontier. He was 
erecting a building for a fencing school there, 
and his mind seemed to be occupied very busily 
with the plans and models of the edifice which 
the architects had formed. Of course, in his 
intended march to Rome, his reliance was not 
to be so much on the force which he should 
take with him, as on the co-operation and sup- 
port which he expected to find there. It was 
his policy, therefore, to move as quietly and pri- 
vately as possible, and with as little display of 
violence, and to avoid every thing which might 
indicate his intended march to any spies which 
might be around him, or to any other persons 
who might be disposed to report what they ob- 



138 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 50. 

Caesar's midnight march. He loses his way. 

served at Rome. Accordingly, on the very eve 
of his departure, he busied himself with his fenc- 
ing school, and assumed with his officers and 
soldiers a careless and unconcerned air, which 
prevented any one from suspecting his design. 

In the course of the day he privately sent 
forward some cohorts to the southward, with 
orders for them to encamp on the banks of the 
Rubicon. When night came he sat down to 
supper as usual, and conversed with his friends 
in his ordinary manner, and went with them 
afterward to a public entertainment. As soon 
as it was dark and the streets were still, he 
set off secretly from the city, accompanied by a 
very few attendants. Instead of making use 
of his ordinary equipage, the parading of which 
would have attracted attention to his move- 
ments, he had some mules taken from a neigh- 
boring bake-house, and harnessed into his chaise. 
There were torch-bearers provided to light the 
way. The cavalcade drove on during the night, 
finding, however, the hasty preparations which 
had been made inadequate for the occasion. 
The torches went out, the guides lost their 
way, and the future conqueror of the world 
wandered about bewildered and lost, until, just 
after break of day, the party met with a peas- 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 141 

Csesar at the Rubicon. His hesitation at the river. 

ant who undertook to guide them. Under his 
direction they made their way to the main 
road again, and advanced then without further 
difficulty to the banks of the river, where they 
found that portion of the army which had been 
sent forward encamped, and awaiting their ar- 
rival. 

Csesar stood for some time upon the banks 
of the stream, musing upon the greatness of 
the undertaking in which simply passing across 
it would involve him. His officers stood by his 
side. "We can retreat now" said he, " but 
once across that river and we must go on." He 
paused for some time, conscious of the vast im* 
portance of the decision, though he thought 
only, doubtless, of its consequences to himself. 
Taking the step which was now before him 
would necessarily end either in his realizing the 
loftiest aspirations of his ambition, or in his ut- 
ter and irreparable ruin. There were vast pub- 
lic interests, too, at stake, of which, however, 
he probably thought but little. It proved, in 
the end, that the history of the whole Roman 
world, for several centuries, was depending upon 
the manner in which the question now in Cae- 
sar's mind should turn. 

There was a. little bridge across the Rubicon 



142 J u i.i us Cesar. [B.C. 50. 

Story of the shepherd trumpeter. Ceesar crosses the Hubicon. 

at the point where Caesar was surveying it. 
While he was standing there, the story is, a 
peasant or shepherd came from the neighboring- 
fields with a shepherd's pipe — a simple musical 
instrument, made of a reed, and used much by 
the rustic musicians of those days. The sol- 
diers and some of the officers gathered around 
him to hear him play. Among the rest came 
some of Caesar's trumpeters, with their trumpets 
in their hands. The shepherd took one of these 
martial instruments from the hands of its pos- 
sessor, laying aside his own, and began to sound 
a charge — which is a signal for a rapid advance 
— and to march at the same time over the bridge. 
" An omen ! a prodigy !" said Caesar. " Let 
us march where we are called by such a divine 
intimation. The die is castP 

So saying, he pressed forward over the bridge, 
while the officers, breaking up the encampment, 
put the columns in motion to follow him. 

It was shown abundantly, on many occasions 
in the course of Caesar's life, that he had no 
faith in omens. There are equally numerous 
instances to show that he was always ready 
to avail himself of the popular belief in them, 
to awaken his soldiers' ardor or to allay their 
fears. Whether, therefore, in respect to this 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 143 

Caesar assembles his troops. His address to them. 

story of the shepherd trumpeter, it was an in- 
cident that really and accidentally occurred, or 
whether Caesar planned and arranged it him- 
self, with reference to its effect, or whether, 
which is, perhaps, after all, the most probable 
supposition, the tale was only an embellishment 
invented out of something or nothing by the 
story-tellers of those days, to give additional 
dramatic interest to the narrative of the cross- 
ing of the Rubicon, it must be left for each 
reader to decide. 

As soon as the bridge was crossed, Caesar 
called an assembly of his troops, and, with signs 
of great excitement and agitation, made an ad- 
dress to them on the magnitude of the crisis 
through which they were passing. He showed 
them how entirely he was in their power ; he 
urged them, by the most eloquent appeals, to 
stand by him, faithful and true, promising them 
the most ample rewards when he should have 
attained the object at which he aimed. The 
soldiers responded to this appeal with promises 
of the most unwavering fidelity. 

The first town on the Roman side of the Ru- 
bicon was Ariminum. Caesar advanced to this 
town. The authorities opened its gates to hirrj 
— very willing, as it appeared, to receive him 



144 Julius C^s a r. [B.C. 50. 

Surrender of various towns. Domitius appointed to supersede Caesar. 

as their commander. Caesar's force was vet 
quite small, as he had been accompanied by 
only a single legion in crossing the river. He 
had, however, sent orders for the other legions, 
which had been left in Gaul, to join him with- 
out any delay, though any re-enforcement of his 
troops seemed hardly necessary, as he found no 
indications of opposition to his progress. He 
gave his soldiers the strictest injunctions to do 
no injury to any property, public or private, as 
they advanced, and not to assume, in any re- 
spect, a hostile attitude toward the people of 
the country. The inhabitants, therefore, wel- 
comed him wherever he came, and all the cities 
and towns followed the example of Ariminum, 
surrendering, in fact, faster than he could take 
possession of them. 

In the confusion of the debates and votes in 
the Senate at Rome before Caesar Grossed the 
Rubicon, one decree had been passed deposing 
him from his command of the army, and ap- 
pointing a successor. The name of the general 
thus appointed was Domitius. The only real 
opposition which Caesar encountered in his prog- 
ress toward Rome was from him. Domitius 
had crossed the Apennines at the head of an 
army on his way northward to supersede Caesar 



B.C.50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 145 

Caesar's treatment of Domitius. Dismay at Rome. 

in his command, and had reached the town of 
Corfinium, which was perhaps one third of the 
way between Rome and the Rubicon. Caesar 
advanced upon him here and shut him in. 

After a brief siege the city was taken, and 
Domitius and his army were made prisoners. 
Every body gave them up for lost, expecting 
that Caesar would wreak terrible vengeance 
upon them. Instead of this, he received the 
troops at once into his own service, and let Do- 
mitius go free. 

In the mean time, the tidings of Caesar's hav- 
ing passed the Rubicon, and of the triumphant 
success which he was meeting with at the com- 
mencement of his march toward Rome, reach- 
ed the Capitol, and added greatly to the pre- 
vailing consternation. The reports of the mag- 
nitude of his force and of the rapidity of his 
progress were greatly exaggerated. The party 
of Pornpey and the Senate had done every thing 
to spread among the people the terror of Cae- 
sar's name, in order to arouse them to efforts 
for opposing his designs ; and now, when he had 
broken through the barriers which had been in- 
tended to restrain him, and was advancing to- 
ward the city in an unchecked and triumphant 
career, they were overwhelmed with dismay. 

K 



146 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 50. 

Pornpey's distress. He leaves Rome. 

Pompey began to be terrified at the danger 
which was impending. The Senate held meet- 
ings without the city — councils of war, as it 
were, in which they looked to Pompey in vain 
for protection from the danger which he had 
brought upon them. He had said that he could 
raise an army sufficient to cope with Caesar at 
any time by stamping with his foot. They 
told him they thought now that it was high 
time for him to stamp. 

In fact, Pompey found the current setting 
every where strongly against him. Some rec- 
ommended that commissioners should be sent 
to Caesar to make proposals for peace. The 
leading men, however, knowing that any peace 
made with him under such circumstances would 
be their own ruin, resisted and defeated the 
proposal. Cato abruptly left the city and pro- 
ceeded to Sicily, which had been assigned him 
as his province. Others fled in other directions. 
Pompey himself, uncertain what to do, and not 
daring to remain, called upon all his partisans 
to join him, and set off at night, suddenly, and 
with very little preparation and small supplies, 
to retreat across the country toward the shores 
of the Adriatic Sea. His destination was Brun- 
dusium, the usual port of embarkation for Mac- 
edon and Greece. 



B.C.50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 147 

Enthusiasm of Ceesar's soldiers. His policy in releasing Domitius. 

Caesar was all this time gradually advancing 
toward Rome. His soldiers were full of en- 
thusiasm in his cause. As his connection with 
the government at home was sundered the mo- 
ment he crossed the Rubicon, all supplies of 
money and of provisions were cut off in that 
quarter until he should arrive at the Capitol and 
take possession of it. The soldiers voted, how- 
ever, that they would serve him without pay. 
The officers, too, assembled together, and ten- 
dered him the aid of their contributions. He 
had always observed a very generous policy in 
his dealings with them, and he was now great- 
ly gratified at receiving their requital of it. 

The further he advanced, too, the more he 
found the people of the country through which 
he passed disposed to espouse his cause. They 
were struck with his generosity in releasing 
Domitius. It is true that it was a very saga- 
cious policy that prompted him to release him. 
But then it was generosity too. In fact, there 
must be something of a generous spirit in the 
soul to enable a man even to see the policy of 
generous actions. 

Among the letters of Caesar that remain to 
the present day, there is one written about this 
time to one of his friends, in which he speaks 



148 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 50. 

Letter of Caesar. Ingratitude of Domitius. 

of this subject. "I am glad," says he, "that 
you approve of my conduct at Corfinium. I am 
satisfied that such a course is the best one for 
us to pursue, as by so doing we shall gain the 
good will of all parties, and thus secure a per- 
manent victory. Most conquerors have incur- 
red the hatred of mankind by their cruelties, 
and have all, in consequence of the enmity they 
have thus awakened, been prevented from long 
enjoying their power. Sylla was an exception; 
but his example of successful cruelty I have no 
disposition to imitate. I will conquer after a 
new fashion, and fortify myself in the posses- 
sion of the power I acquire by generosity and 
mercy." 

Domitius had the ingratitude, after this re- 
lease, to take up arms again, and wage a new 
war against Caesar. When Csesar heard of it, 
he said it was all right. " I will act out the 
principles of my nature," said he, " and he may 
act out his." 

Another instance of Csesar's generosity oc- 
curred, which is even more remarkable than 
this. It seems that among the officers of his 
army there were some whom he had appointed 
at the recommendation of Pompey, at the time 
when he and Pompey were friends. These men 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 149 

Caesar's generosity. Modern politicians. 

would, of course, feel under obligations of grati- 
tude to Pompey, as they owed their military 
rank to his friendly interposition in their behalf. 
As soon as the war broke out, Caesar gave them 
all his free permission to go over to Pompey's 
side, if they chose to do so. 

Caesar acted thus very liberally in all respects. 
He surpassed Pompey very much in the spirit 
of generosity and mercy with which he entered 
upon the great contest before them. Pompey 
ordered every citizen to join his standard, de- 
claring that he should consider all neutrals as 
his enemies. Caesar, on the other hand, gave 
free permission to every one to decline, if he 
chose, taking any part in the contest, saying 
that he should consider all who did not act 
against him as his friends. In the political con- 
tests of our day, it is to be observed that the 
combatants are much more prone to imitate the 
bigotry of Pompey than the generosity of Caesar, 
condemning, as they often do, those who choose 
to stand aloof from electioneering struggles, more 
than they do their most determined opponents 
and enemies. 

When, at length, Caesar arrived at Brundu- 
sium, he found that Pompey had sent a part of 
his army across the Adriatic into Greece, and 



150 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 50. 

. Caesar arrives at Brundusium. He besieges Pompey. 

was waiting for the transports to return that he 
might go over himself with the remainder. In 
the mean time, he had fortified himself strongly 
in the city. Csesar immediately laid siege to 
the place, and he commenced some works to 
block up the mouth of the harbor. He built 
peers on each side, extending out as far into the 
sea as the depth of the water would allow them 
to be built. He then constructed a series of 
rafts, which he anchored on the deep water, in 
a line extending from one pier to the other. He 
built towers upon these rafts, and garrisoned 
them with soldiers, in hopes by this means to 
prevent all egress from the fort. He thought 
that, when this work was completed, Pompey 
would be entirely shut in, beyond all possibility 
of escape. 

The transports, however, returned before the 
work was completed. Its progress was, of 
course, slow, as the constructions were the scene 
of a continued conflict ; for Pompey sent out 
rafts and galleys against them every day, and the 
workmen had thus to build in the midst of con- 
tinual interruptions, sometimes from showers 
of darts, arrows, and javelins, sometimes from 
the conflagrations of fireships, and sometimes 
from the terrible concussions of great vessels 



B.C. 50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 151 

Pompey's plan of escape. It is made known to Ca3sar. 

of war, impelled with prodigious force against 
them. The transports returned, therefore, be- 
fore the defenses were complete, and contrived 
to get into the harbor. Pompey immediately 
formed his plan for embarking the remainder of 
his army. 

He filled the streets of the city with barri- 
cades and pitfalls, excepting two streets which 
led to the place of embarkation. The object 
of these obstructions was to embarrass Caesar's 
progress through the city in case he should 
force an entrance while his men were getting 
on board the ships. He then, in order to divert 
Caesar's attention from his design, doubled the 
guards stationed upon the walls on the evening 
of his intended embarkation, and ordered them 
to make vigorous attacks upon all Caesar's forces 
outside. He then, when the darkness came on, 
marched his troops through the two streets 
which had been left open to the landing place, 
and got them as fast as possible on board the 
transports. Some of the people of the town 
contrived to make known to Caesar's army what 
was going on by means of signals from the 
walls ; the army immediately brought scaling 
ladders in great numbers, and, mounting the 
walls with . great ardor and impetuosity, they 



152 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 50. 

Success of Pompey's plan. Caesar's conduct at Rome. 

drove all before them, and soon broke open the 
gates and got possession of the city. But the 
barricades and pitfalls, together with the dark- 
ness, so embarrassed their movements, that 
Pompey succeeded in completing his embarka- 
tion and sailing away. 

Caesar had no ships in which to follow. He 
returned to Rome. He met, of course, with no 
opposition. He re-established the government 
there, organized the Senate anew, and obtained 
supplies of corn from the public granaries, and of 
money from the city treasury in the Capitol. In 
going to the Capitoline Hill after this treasure, 
he found the officer who had charge of the money 
stationed there to defend it. He told Caesar 
that it was contrary to law for him to enter. 
Caesar said that, for men with swords in their 
hands, there was no law. The officer still re- 
fused to admit him. Caesar then told him to 
open the doors, or he would kill him on the spot. 
" And you must understand," he added, " that 
it will be easier for me to do it than it has been 
to say it." The officer resisted no longer, and 
Caesar went in. 

After this, Caesar spent some time in vig- 
orous campaigns in Italy, Spain, Sicily, and 
Gaul, wherever there was manifested any op- 



B.C.50.] Crossing the Rubicon. 153 

Caesar subdues various countries. He turns his thoughts to Pompey. 

position to his sway. When this work was ac- 
complished, and all these countries were com- 
pletely subjected to his dominion, he began to 
turn his thoughts to the plan of pursuing Pom- 
pey across the Adriatic Sea. 



154 Julius Cjesar. [B.C.; 48, 

The gathering armies. Pompey's preparations. 



Chapter VII. 

The Battle of Pharsalia. 

FT! HE gathering of the armies of Caesar and 
-*- Pompey on the opposite shores of the Adri- 
atic Sea was one of the grandest preparations 
for conflict that history has recorded, and the 
whole world gazed upon the spectacle at the 
time with an intense and eager interest, which 
was heightened by the awe and terror which 
the danger inspired. During the year while 
Caesar had been completing his work of subdu- 
ing and arranging all the western part of the 
empire, Pompey had been gathering from the 
eastern division every possible contribution to 
swell the military force under his command, 
and had been concentrating all these elements 
of power on the coasts of Macedon and Greece, 
opposite to Brundusium, where he knew that 
Caesar would attempt to cross the Adriatic Sea. 
His camps, his detachments, his troops of arch- 
ers and slingers, and his squadrons of horse, fill- 
ed the land, while every port was guarded, and 
the line of the coast was environed by batteries 



B.C. 48.] Battle of Pharsalia. 155 

Caesar at Brundusium. His address to his army. 

and castles on the rocks, and fleets of galleys on 
the water. Csesar advanced with his immense 
army to Brundusium, on the opposite shore, in 
December, so that, in addition to the formida- 
ble resistance prepared for him by his enemy 
on the coast, he had to encounter the wild surges 
of the Adriatic, rolling perpetually in the dark 
and gloomy commotion always raised in such 
wide seas by wintery storms. 

Coesar had no ships, for Pompey had cleared 
the seas of every thing which could aid him in 
his intended passage. By great efforts, howev- 
er, he succeeded at length in getting together 
a sufficient number of galleys to convey over 
a part of his army, provided he took the men 
alone, and left all his military stores and bag- 
gage behind. He gathered his army together, 
therefore, and made them an address, represent- 
ing that they were now drawing toward the 
end of all their dangers and toils. They were 
about to meet their great enemy for a final con- 
flict. It was not necessary to take their serv- 
ants, their baggage, and their stores across the 
sea, for they were sure of victory, and victory 
would furnish them with ample supplies from 
those whom they were about to conquer. 

The soldiers eagerly imbibed the spirit of con- 



156 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 48. 

Caesar crosses the Adriatic. He subdues several towns. 

fidence and courage which Caesar himself ex- 
pressed. A large detachment embarked and 
put to sea, and, after being tossed all night upon 
the cold and stormy waters, they approached 
the shore at some distance to the northward of 
the place where Pompey's fleets had expected 
them. It was at a point where the mountains 
came down near to the sea, rendering the coast 
rugged and dangerous with shelving rocks and 
frowning promontories. Here Caesar succeeded 
in effecting a landing of the first division of his 
troops, and then sent back the fleet for the re- 
mainder. 

The news of his passage spread rapidly to all 
Pompey's stations along the coast, and the ships 
began to gather, and the armies to march to- 
ward the point where Caesar had effected his 
landing. The conflict and struggle commenced. 
One of Pompey's admirals intercepted the fleet 
of galleys on their return, and seized and burn- 
ed a large number of them, with all who were 
on board. This, of course, only renewed the 
determined desperation of the remainder. Cae- 
sar advanced along the coast with the troops 
which he had landed, driving Pompey's troops 
before him, and subduing town after town as 
he advanced. The countrv was filled with ter- 



B.C. 48.] Battle of Pharsalia. 157 

Caesar's advance. Distress of the armies. 

ror and dismay. The portion of the army which 
Caesar had left behind could not now cross, part- 
ly on account of the stormy condition of the 
seas, the diminished number of the ships, and 
the redoubled vigilance w T ith which Pompey's 
forces now guarded the shores, but mainly be^ 
cause Caesar was now no longer with them to 
inspire them with his reckless, though calm and 
quiet daring. They remained, therefore, in 
anxiety and distress, on the Italian shore. As 
Caesar, on the other hand, advanced along the 
Macedonian shore, and drove Pompey back into 
the interior, he cut off the communication be- 
tween Pompey's ships and the land, so that the 
fleet was soon reduced to great distress for want 
of provisions and water. The men kept them- 
selves from perishing with thirst by collecting 
the dew which fell upon the decks of their gal- 
leys. Caesar's army was also in distress, for 
Pompey's fleets cut off all supplies by water, 
and his troops hemmed him in on the side of 
the land ; and, lastly, Pompey himself, with the 
immense army that was under his command, 
began to be struck with alarm at the impend- 
ing danger with which they were threatened. 
Pompey little realized, however, how dreadful 
a fate was soon to overwhelm him. 



158 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 48. 

Caesar's impatience. He attempts to cross the Adriatic. 

The winter months rolled away, and nothing 
effectual was done. The forces, alternating and 
intermingled, as above described, kept each oth- 
er in a continued state of anxiety and suffering. 
Caesar became impatient at the delay of that 
portion of his army that he had left on the Ital- 
ian shore. The messages of encouragement 
and of urgency which he sent across to them 
did not bring them over, and at length, one dark 
and stormy night, when he thought that the 
inclemency of the skies and the heavy surging 
of the swell in the offing would drive his vig- 
ilant enemies into places of shelter, and put 
them off their guard, he determined to cross 
the sea himself and bring his hesitating army 
over. He ordered a galley to be prepared, and 
went on board of it disguised, and with his head 
muffled in his mantle, intending that not even 
the officers or crew of the ship which was to 
convey him should know of his design. The 
galley, in obedience to orders, put off from the 
shore. The mariners endeavored in vain for 
some time to make head against the violence 
of the w T ind and the heavy concussions of the 
waves, and at length, terrified at the imminence 
of the danger to w T hich so wild and tumultuous 
a sea on such a night exposed them, refused to 



B.C. 48.] Battle of Pharsalia. 159 

Caesar lands the remainder of his army. Attempts at negotiation. 

proceed, and the commander gave them orders 
to return. Caesar then came forward, threw 
off his mantle, and said to them, " Friends! 
you have nothing to fear. You are carrying 
Caesar." 

The men were, of course, inspirited anew by 
this disclosure, but all was in vain. The ob- 
stacles to the passage proved insurmountable, 
and the galley, to avoid certain destruction, was 
compelled to return. 

The army, however, on the Italian side, hear- 
ing of Caesar's attempt to return to them, fruit- 
less though it was, and stimulated by the re- 
newed urgency of the orders which he now sent 
to them, made arrangements at last for an em- 
barkation, and, after encountering great dan- 
gers on the way, succeeded in landing in safety. 
Caesar, thus strengthened, began to plan more 
decided operations for the coming spring. 

There were some attempts at negotiation. 
The armies were so exasperated against each 
other on account of the privations and hardships 
which each compelled the other to suffer, that 
they felt too strong a mutual distrust to attempt 
any regular communication by commissioners or 
embassadors appointed for the purpose. They 
came to a parley, however, in one or two in- 



160 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 48. 

Conferences. End in violence and disorder. 

stances, though the interviews led to no result. 
As the missiles used in those days were such 
as could only be thrown to a very short distance, 
hostile bodies of men could approach much 
nearer to each other then than is possible now, 
when projectiles of the most terribly destructive 
character can be thrown for miles. In one in- 
stance, some of the ships of Pompey's fleet ap- 
proached so near to the shore as to open a confer- 
ence with one or two of Csesars lieutenants who 
were encamped there. In another case, two 
bodies of troops from the respective armies were 
separated only by a river, and the officers and 
soldiers came down to the banks on either side, 
and held frequent conversations, calling to each 
other in loud voices across the water. In this 
way they succeeded in so far coming to an agree- 
ment as to fix upon a time and place for a more 
formal conference, to be held by commissioners 
chosen on each side. This conference was thus 
held, but each party came to it accompanied 
by a considerable body of attendants, and these, 
as might have been anticipated, came into open 
collision while the discussion was pending ; thus 
the meeting consequently ended in violence and 
disorder, each party accusing the other of viola- 
ting the faith which both had plighted. 



B.C. 48.] Battle of Pharsalia. 161 

Undecided warfare. Bread made of roots. 

This slow and undecided mode of warfare be- 
tween the two vast armies continued for many 
months without any decisive results. There 
were skirmishes, struggles, sieges, blockades, 
and many brief and partial conflicts, but no 
general and decided battle. Now the advant- 
age seemed on one side, and now on the other. 
Pompey so hemmed in Caesar's troops at one 
period, and so cut off his supplies, that the men 
were reduced to extreme distress for food. At 
length they found a kind of root which they dug 
from the ground, and, after drying and pulver- 
izing it, they made a sort of bread of the powder, 
which the soldiers were willing to eat rather 
than either starve or give up the contest. They 
told Caesar, in fact, that they would live on the 
bark of trees rather than abandon his cause. 
Pompey's soldiers, at one time, coming near to 
the walls of a town which they occupied, taunt- 
ed and jeered them on account of their wretch- 
ed destitution of food. Caesar's soldiers threw 
loaves of this bread at them in return, by way 
of symbol that they were abundantly supplied. 

After some time the tide of fortune turned. 
Caesar contrived, by a succession of adroit ma- 
neuvers and movements, to escape from his 
toils, and to circumvent and surround Pompey 's 

L 



162 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 48. 

Cesar hems Pornpey in. Anxiety of he rivals. 

forces so as soon to make them suffer destitution 
and distress in their turn. He cut off all com- 
munication between them and the country at 
large, and turned away the brooks and streams 
from flowing through the ground they occupied. 
An army of forty or fifty thousand men, with 
the immense number of horses and beasts of 
burden which accompany them, require very 
large supplies of water, and any destitution or 
even scarcity of water leads immediately to the 
most dreadful consequences. Pompey's troops 
dug wells, but they obtained only very insuffi- 
cient supplies. Great numbers of beasts of 
burden died, and their decaying bodies so taint- 
ed the air as to produce epidemic diseases, which 
destroyed many of the troops, and depressed and 
disheartened those whom they did not destroy. 
During all these operations there was no de- 
cisive general battle. Each one of the great ri- 
vals knew very well that his defeat in one gen- 
eral battle would be his utter and irretrievable 
ruin. In a war between two independent na- 
tions, a single victory, however complete, sel- 
dom terminates the struggle, for the defeated 
party has the resources of a whole realm to fall 
back upon, which are sometimes called forth 
with renewed vigor after experiencing such re- 



B.C. 48.] Battle of Pharsalia. 163 

Nature of the contest between Caesar and Pompey. Both hesitate. 

verses ; and then defeat in such cases, even if 
it be final, does not necessarily involve the ruin 
of the unsuccessful commander. He may ne- 
gotiate an honorable peace, and return to his 
own land in safety ; and, if his misfortunes are 
considered by his countrymen as owing not to 
any dereliction from his duty as a soldier, but 
to the influence of adverse circumstances which 
no human skill or resolution could have con- 
trolled, he may spend the remainder of his days 
in prosperity and honor. The contest, how- 
ever, between Caesar and Pompey was not of 
this character. One or the other of them was 
a traitor and a usurper — an enemy to his coun- 
try. The result of a battle would decide which 
of the two was to stand in this attitude. Vic- 
tory would legitimize and confirm the authori- 
ty of one, and make it supreme over the whole 
civilized world. Defeat was to annihilate the 
power of the other, and make him a fugitive 
and a vagabond, without friends, without home, 
without country. It was a desperate stake; 
and it is not at all surprising that both parties 
lingered and hesitated, and postponed the throw- 
ing of the die. 

At length Pompey, rendered desperate by the 
urgency of the destitution and distress into 



164 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 48. 

The armies enter Thessaty. The plain of Pharsalia. 

which Caesar had shut him, made a series of 
vigorous and successful attacks upon Caesar's 
lines, by which he broke away in his turn from 
his enemy's grasp, and the two armies moved 
slowly back into the interior of the country, 
hovering in the vicinity of each other, like birds 
of prey contending in the air, each continually 
striking at the other, and moving onward at the 
same time to gain some position of advantage, 
or to circumvent the other in such a design. 
They passed on in this manner over plains, and 
across rivers, and through mountain passes, un- 
til at length they reached the heart of Thes- 
saly. Here at last the armies came to a stand 
and fought the final battle. 

The place was known then as the plain 
of Pharsalia, and the greatness of the contest 
which was decided there has immortalized its 
name. Pompey's forces were far more numer- 
ous than those of Caesar, and the advantage in 
all the partial contests which had taken place 
for some time had been on his side ; he felt, con- 
sequently, sure of victory. He drew up his men 
in a line, one flank resting upon the bank of a 
river, which protected them from attack on that 
side. From this point, the long line of legions, 
drawn up in battle array, extended out upon 



B.C.48.] Battle of Phaesalia. 



165 



Roman standard bearers. 



Pompey draws up his army. 




Roman Standard Bearers. 



the plain, and was terminated at the other ex- 
tremity by strong squadrons of horse, and bodies 
of slingers and archers, so as to give the force 
of weapons and the activity of men as great a 
range as possible there, in order to prevent Cae- 
sar's being able to outflank and surround them. 
There was, however, apparently very little 
danger of this, for Csesar, according to his own 



166 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Forces on both sides. Appearance of Pompey s camp. 

story, had but about half as strong a force as 
Pompey. The army of the latter, he says, con- 
sisted of nearly fifty thousand men, while his 
own number was between twenty and thirty 
thousand. Generals, however, are prone to 
magnify the military grandeur of their exploits 
by overrating the strength with which they 
had to contend, and under-estimating their own. 
We are therefore to receive with some distrust 
the statements made by Csesar and his parti- 
sans ; and as for Pompey's story, the total and 
irreparable ruin in which he himself and all who 
adhered to him were entirely overwhelmed im- 
mediately after the battle, prevented its being 
ever told. 

In the rear of the plain where Pompey's lines 
were extended was the camp from which the 
army had been drawn out to prepare for the 
battle. The camp fires of the preceding night 
were moldering away, for it was a warm sum- 
mer morning ; the intrenchments were guard- 
ed, and the tents, now nearly empty, stood ex- 
tended in long rows within the inclosure. In 
the midst of them was the magnificent pavilion 
of the general, furnished with every imaginable 
article of luxury and splendor. Attendants 
were busy here and there, some rearranging 



B.C. 48.] Battle of PharSalia. 167 

Pompey's tent. His confidence of victory. 

what had been left in disorder by the call to 
arms by which the troops had been summoned 
from their places of rest, and others preparing 
refreshments and food for their victorious com- 
rades when they should return from the battle. 
In Pompey's tent a magnificent entertainment 
was preparing. The tables were spread with 
every luxury, the sideboards were loaded with 
plate, and the whole scene was resplendent with 
utensils and decorations of silver and gold. 

Pompey and all his generals were perfectly 
certain of victory. In fact, the peace and har- 
mony of their councils in camp had been de- 
stroyed for many days by their contentions and 
disputes about the disposal of the high offices, 
and the places of profit and power at Rome, 
which were to come into their hands, when. Cae- 
sar should have been subdued. The subduing 
of Csesar they considered only a question of 
time; and, as a question of time, it was now 
reduced to very narrow limits. A few days 
more, and they were to be masters of the whole 
Roman empire, and, impatient and greedy, they 
disputed in anticipation about the division of 
the spoils. 

To make assurance doubly sure, Pompey 
gave orders that his troops should not advance 



168 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 48. 

The battle of Pharsalia. Defeat of Porapey. 

to meet the onset of Caesar's troops on the mid- 
dle ground between the two armies, but that 
they should wait calmly for the attack, and re- 
ceive the enemy at the posts where they had 
themselves been arrayed. 

The hour at length arrived, the charge was 
sounded by the trumpets, and Caesar's troops 
began to advance with loud shouts and great 
impetuosity toward Pompey's lines. There 
was a long and terrible struggle, but the forces 
of Pompey began finally to give way. Notwith- 
standing the precautions which Pompey had ta- 
ken to guard and protect the wing of his army 
which was extended toward the land, Caesar 
succeeded in turning his flank upon that side 
by driving off the cavalry and destroying the 
archers and slingers, and he was thus enabled 
to throw a strong force upon Pompey's rear. 
The flight then soon became general, and a 
scene of dreadful confusion and slaughter en- 
sued. The soldiers of Caesar's army, maddened 
with the insane rage which the progress of a 
battle never fails to awaken, and now excited 
to phrensy by the exultation of success, pressed 
on after the affrighted fugitives, who trampled 
one upon another, or fell pierced with the weap- 
ons of their assailants, filling the air with their 



B.C. 48.] Battle of Pharsalia. 169 

Scene of horror. Pompey's flight to the camp. 

cries of agony and their shrieks of terror. The 
horrors of the scene, far from allaying, only ex- 
cited still more the ferocity of their bloodthirsty 
foes, and they pressed steadily and fiercely on, 
hour after hour, in their dreadful work of de- 
struction. It was one of those scenes of horror 
and woe, such as those who have not witnessed 
them can not conceive of, and those who have 
witnessed can never forget. 

When Pompey perceived that all was lost, 
he fled from the field in a state of the wildest 
excitement and consternation. His troops were 
flying in all directions, some toward the camp, 
vainly hoping to find refuge there, and others 
in various other quarters, wherever they saw 
the readiest hope of escape from their merciless 
pursuers. Pompey himself fled instinctively 
toward the camp. As he passed the guards at 
the gate where he entered, he commanded them, 
in his agitation and terror, to defend the gate 
against the coming enemy, saying that he was 
going to the other gates to attend to the defenses 
there. He then hurried on, but a full sense of 
the helplessness and hopelessness of his condi- 
tion soon overwhelmed him ; he gave up all 
thought of defense, and, passing with a sinking 
heart through the scene of consternation and 



170 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Pompty in his tent. His consternation and despair. 

confusion which reigned every where within 
the encampment, he sought his own tent, and, 
rushing into it, sank down, amid the luxury 
and splendor which had been arranged to do 
honor to his anticipated victory, in a state of 
utter stupefaction and despair. 



« 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 171 

Pursuit of the vanquished. Pompey recovers himself. 



Chapter VIII. 

Flight and Death of Pompey. 

/"^1-ZESAR pursued the discomfited and flying 
^-^ bodies of Pompey's army to the camp. 
They made a brief stand upon the ramparts 
and at the gates, in a vain and fruitless strug- 
gle against the tide of victory which they soon 
perceived must fully overwhelm them. They 
gave way continually here and there along the 
lines of intrench ment, and column after column 
of Caesar's followers broke through into the 
camp. . Pompey, hearing from his tent the in- 
creasing noise and uproar, was at length aroused 
from his stupor, and began to summon his fac- 
ulties to the question what he was to do. At 
length a party of fugitives, hotly pursued by 
some of Caesar's soldiers, broke into his tent. 
" What!" said Pompey, "into my tent too!" 
He had been for more than thirty years a vic- 
torious general, accustomed to all the deference 
and respect which boundless wealth, extended 
and absolute power, and the highest military 
rank could afford. In the encampments which 



172 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 48. 

Pompey disguises himself. He escapes from the camp. 

he had made, and in the cities which he had 
occupied from time to time, he had been the 
supreme and unquestioned master, and his tent, 
arranged and furnished, as it had always been, 
in a style of the utmost magnificence and splen- 
dor, had been sacred from all intrusion, and in- 
vested with such a dignity that potentates and 
princes were impressed when they entered with 
a feeling of deference and awe. Now, rude 
soldiers burst wildly into it, and the air without 
was filled with an uproar and confusion, draw- 
ing every moment nearer and nearer, and warn- 
ing the fallen hero that there was no longer any 
protection there against the approaching torrent 
which was coming on to overwhelm him. 

Pompey aroused himself from his stupor, 
threw off the military dress which belonged to 
his rank and station, and assumed a hasty dis- 
guise, in which he hoped he might make his es- 
cape from the immediate scene of his calamities. 
He mounted a horse and rode out of the camp 
at the easiest place of egress in the rear, in com- 
pany with bodies of troops and guards who were 
also flying in confusion, while Caesar and his 
forces on the other side were carrying the in- 
trenchments and forcing their way in. As soon 
as he had thus made his escape from the im- 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 173 

The Vale of Tempe. Its picturesqueness. 

mediate scene of danger, he dismounted and left 
his horse, that he might assume more com- 
pletely the appearance of a common soldier, and, 
with a few attendants who were willing to fol- 
low his fallen fortunes, he went on to the east- 
ward, directing his weary steps toward the 
shores of the iEgean Sea. 

The country through which he was traveling 
was Thessaly. Thessaly is a vast amphithea- 
ter, surrounded by mountains, from whose sides 
streams descend, which, after watering many 
fertile valleys and plains, combine to form one 
great central river that flows to the eastward, 
and after various meanderings, finds its way 
into theiEgean Sea through a romantic gap be- 
tween two mountains, called the Vale of Tempe 
—a vale which has been famed in all ages for the 
extreme picturesqueness of its scenery, and in 
which, in those days, all the charms both of the 
most alluring beauty and of the sublimest gran- 
deur seemed to be combined. Pompey followed 
the roads leading along the banks of this stream, 
weary in body, and harassed and disconsolate 
in mind. The news which came to him from 
time to time, by the flying parties which were 
moving through the country in all directions, 
of the entire and overwhelming completeness 



174 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 48. 

Pompey's sufferings. A drink of water. 

of Caesar's victory, extinguished all remains of 
hope, and narrowed down at last the grounds 
of his solicitude to the single point of his own 
personal safety. He was well aware that he 
should be pursued, and, to baffle the efforts 
which he knew that his enemies would make 
to follow his track, he avoided large towns, and 
pressed forward in by-ways and solitudes, bear- 
ing as patiently as he was able his increasing 
destitution and distress. He reached, at length, 
the Vale of Tempe, and there, exhausted with 
hunger, thirst, and fatigue, he sat down upon 
the bank of the stream to recover by a little 
rest strength enough for the remainder of his 
weary way. He wished for a drink, but he had 
nothing to drink from. And so the mighty po- 
tentate, whose tent was full of delicious bever- 
ages, and cups and goblets of silver and gold, 
extended himself down upon the sand at the 
margin of the river, and drank the warm water 
directly from the stream. 

While Pompey was thus anxiously and toil- 
somely endeavoring to gain the sea-shore, Cse- 
sar was completing his victory over the army 
which he had left behind him. When Caesar 
had carried the intrench men ts of the camp, and 
the army found that there was no longer any 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 175 

Ctesar in Pompey's camp. Retreat of Porapey's army. 

safety for them there, they continued their re- 
treat under the guidance of such generals as re- 
mained. Caesar thus gained undisputed pos- 
session of the camp. He found every where 
the marks of wealth and luxury, and indica- 
tions of the confident expectation of victory 
which the discomfited army had entertained. 
The tents of the generals were crowned with 
myrtle, the beds were strewed with flowers, 
and tables every where were spread for feasts, 
with cups and bowls of wine all ready for the 
expected revelers. Caesar took possession of 
the whole, stationed a proper guard to protect 
the property, and then pressed forward with his 
army in pursuit of the enemy. 

Pompey's army made their way to a neighbor- 
ing rising ground, where they threw up hasty in- 
trenchments to protect themselves for the night. 
A rivulet ran near the hill, the access to which 
they endeavored to secure, in order to obtain 
supplies of water. Caesar and his forces follow- 
ed them to this spot. The day was gone, and it 
was too late to attack them. Caesar's soldiers, 
too, were exhausted with the intense and pro- 
tracted excitement and exertions which had now 
been kept up for many hours in the battle and 
in the pursuit, and they needed repose. They 



176 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Surrender of Poinpey's army. Pompey in the Vale of Tempe. 

made, however, one effort more. They seized 
the avenue of approach to the rivulet, and threw 
up a temporary intrenchment to secure it, 
which intrenchment they protected with a 
guard ; and then the army retired to rest, leav- 
ing their helpless victims to while away the 
hours of the night, tormented with thirst, and 
overwhelmed with anxiety and despair. This 
could not long be endured. They surrendered 
in the morning, and Caesar found himself in 
possession of over twenty thousand prisoners. 

In the mean time. Pompey passed on through 
the Vale of Tempe toward the sea, regardless of 
the beauty and splendor that surrounded him, 
and thinking only of his fallen fortunes, and 
revolving despairingly in his mind the various 
forms in which the final consummation of his 
rain might ultimately come. At length he 
reached the sea-shore, and found refuge for the 
night in a fisherman's cabin. A small number 
of attendants remained with him, some of whom 
were slaves. These he now dismissed, direct- 
ing them to return and surrender themselves to 
Caesar, saying that he was a generous foe, and 
that they had nothing to fear from him. His 
other attendants he retained, and he made ar- 
rangements for a boat to take him the next day 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 177 

Pompey embarks on board a vessel. The shipmaster's dream. 

along the coast. It was a river boat, and un- 
suited to the open sea, but it was all that he 
could obtain. 

He arose the next morning at break of day, 
and embarked in the little vessel, with two or 
three attendants, and the oarsmen began to 
row away along the shore. They soon came in 
sight of a merchant ship just ready to sail. The 
master of this vessel, it happened, had seen 
Pompey, and knew his countenance, and he had 
dreamed, as a famous historian of the times re- 
lates, on the night before, that Pompey had 
come to him in the guise of a simple soldier 
and in great distress, and that he had received 
and rescued him. There was nothing extraor- 
dinary in such a dream at such a time, as the 
contest between Csesar and Pompey, and the 
approach of the final collision which was to de- 
stroy one or the other of them, filled the minds 
and occupied the conversation of the world. 
The shipmaster, therefore, having seen and 
known one of the great rivals in the approach- 
ing conflict, would naturally find both his wak- 
ing and sleeping thoughts dwelling on the sub- 
ject ; and his fancy, in his dreams, might eas- 
ily picture the scene of his rescuing and saving 
the fallen hero in the hour of his distress. 

M 



178 Julius Cesar. IB.C. 48. 

Pompey goes on board a merchant ship. His arrival at Amphipolis. 

However this may be, the shipmaster is said 
to have been relating his dream to the seamen 
on the deck of his vessel when the boat which 
was conveying Pompey came into view. Pom- 
pey himself, having escaped from the land, sup- 
posed all immediate danger over, not imagining 
that seafaring men would recognize him in such 
*a situation and in such a disguise. The ship- 
master did, however, recognize him. He was 
overwhelmed with grief at seeing him in such 
a condition. With a countenance and with 
gestures expressive of earnest surprise and sor- 
row, he beckoned to Pompey to come on board. 
He ordered his own ship's boat to be immedi- 
ately let down to meet and receive him. Pom- 
pey came on board. The ship was given up to 
his possession, and every possible arrangement 
was made to supply his wants, to contribute to 
his comfort, and to do him honor. 

The vessel conveyed him to Amphipolis, a 
city of Macedonia near the sea, and to the north- 
ward and eastward of the place where he had 
embarked. When Pompey arrived at the port, 
he sent proclamations to the shore, calling upon 
the inhabitants to take arms and join his stand- 
ard. He did not, however, land, or take any 
other measures for carrying these arrangements 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 179 



Pompey's wife Cornelia. Her beauty and accomplishments. 

into effect. He only waited in the river upon 
which Amphipolis stands long enough to re- 
ceive a supply of money from some of his friends 
on the shore, and stores for his voyage, and then 
set sail again. Whether he learned that Cae- 
sar was advancing in that direction with a force 
too strong for him to encounter, or found that 
the people were disinclined to espouse his cause,* 
or whether the whole movement was a feint to 
direct Caesar's attention to Macedon as the field 
of his operations, in order that he might escape 
more secretly and safely beyond the sea, can 
not now be ascertained. 

Pompey's wife Cornelia was on the island of 
Lesbos, at Mitylene, near the western coast of 
Asia Minor. She was a lady of distinguished 
beauty, and of great intellectual superiority and 
moral worth. She was extremely well versed 
in all the learning of the times, and yet was 
entirely free from those peculiarities and airs 
which, as her historian says, were often ob- 
served in learned ladies in those days. Pom- 
pey had married her after the death of Julia, 
Caesar's daughter. They were strongly devot- 
ed to each other. Pompey had provided for her 
a beautiful retreat on the island of Lesbos, 
where she was living in elegance and splendor, 



180 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 48. 

Pompey's arrival at Mitylene. His meeting with Cornelia. 

beloved for her own intrinsic charms, and high- 
ly honored on account of the greatness and fame 
of her husband. Here she had received from 
time to time glowing accounts of his success, 
all exaggerated as they came to her, through 
the eager desire of the narrators to give her 
pleasure. 

From this high elevation of honor and happi- 
ness the ill-fated Cornelia suddenly fell, on the 
arrival of Pompey's solitary vessel at Mitylene, 
bringing as it did, at the same time, both the 
first intelligence of her husband's fall, and him- 
self in person, a ruined and homeless fugitive 
and wanderer. The meeting was sad and sor- 
rowful. Cornelia was overwhelmed at the sud- 
denness and violence of the shock which it 
brought her, and Pompey lamented anew the 
dreadful disaster that he had sustained, at find- 
ing how inevitably it must involve his beloved 
wife as well as himself in its irreparable ruin. 

The pain, however, was not wholly without 
some mingling of pleasure. A husband finds 
a strange sense of protection and safety in the 
presence and sympathy of an affectionate wife 
in the hour of his calamity. She can, perhaps, 
do nothing, but her mute and sorrowful con- 
cern and pity comfort and reassure him. Cor- 



\ 

B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 181 

Pompey gathers a little fleet. He sails along the Mediterranean. 

nelia, however, was able to render her husband 
some essential aid. She resolved immediately 
to accompany him wherever he should go ; and, 
by their joint endeavors, a little fleet was gath- 
ered, and such supplies as could be hastily ob- 
tained, and such attendants and followers as 
were willing to share his fate, were taken on 
board. During all this time Pompey would 
not go on shore himself, but remained on board 
his ship in the harbor. Perhaps he was afraid 
of some treachery or surprise, or perhaps, in 
his fallen and hopeless condition, he was un- 
willing to expose himself to the gaze of those 
who had so often seen him in all the splendor 
of his former power. 

At length, w T hen all was ready, he sailed away. 
He passed eastward along the Mediterranean, 
touching at such ports as he supposed most 
likely to favor his cause. Vague and uncer- 
tain, but still alarming rumors that Caesar was 
advancing in pursuit of him met him every 
where, and the people of the various provinces 
were taking sides, some in his favor and some 
against him, the excitement being every where 
so great that the utmost caution and circum- 
spection were required in all his movements. 
Sometimes he was refused permission to land ; 



J 

182 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Pompey receives additional supplies. He seeks refuge in Egypt. 

at others, his friends were too few to afford him 
protection ; and at others still, though the au- 
thorities professed friendship, he did not dare to 
trust them. He obtained, however, some sup- 
plies of money and some accessions to the num- 
ber of ships and men under his command, until 
at length he had quite a little fleet in his train. 
Several men of rank and influence, who had 
served under him in the days of his prosperity, 
nobly adhered to him now, and formed a sort 
of court or council on board his galley, where 
they held with their great though fallen com- 
mander frequent conversations on the plan which 
it was best to pursue. 

It was finally decided that it was best to seek 
refuge in Egypt. There seemed to be, in fact, 
no alternative. All the rest of the>vorld was 
evidently going over to Caesar. Pompey had 
been the means, some years before, of restoring 
a certain king of Egypt to his throne, and many 
of his soldiers had been left in the country, and 
remained there still. It is true that the king 
himself had died. He had left a daughter 
named Cleopatra, and •also a son, who was at 
this time very young. The name of this youth- 
ful prince was Ptolemy. Ptolemy and Cleo- 
patra had been made by their father joint heirs 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 183 

Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Pompey arrives at Pelusiutn. 

to the throne. But Ptolemy, or, rather, the 
ministers and counselors who acted for him and 
in his name, had expelled Cleopatra, that they 
might govern alone. Cleopatra had raised an 
army in Syria, and was on her way to the fron- 
tiers of Egypt to regain possession of what she 
deemed her rights. Ptolemy's ministers had 
gone forth to meet her at the head of their own 
troops, Ptolemy himself being also with them. 
They had reached Pelusium, which is the fron- 
tier town between Egypt and Syria on the coast 
of the Mediterranean. Here their armies had 
assembled in vast encampments upon the land, 
and their galleys and transports were riding at 
anchor along the shore of the sea. Pompey and 
his counselors thought that the government of 
Ptolemy would receive him as a friend, on ac- 
count of the services he had rendered to the 
young prince's father, forgetting that gratitude 
has never a place on the list of political virtues. 
Pompey's little squadron made its way slowly 
over the waters of the Mediterranean toward 
Pelusium and the camp of Ptolemy. As they 
approached the shore, both Pompey himself and 
Cornelia felt many anxious forebodings. A mes- 
senger was sent to the land to inform the young 
king of Pompey's approach, and to solicit his 



184 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Ptolemy's council resolve to murder Pompey. The assassin Achillas. 

protection. The government of Ptolemy held a 
council, and took the subject into consideration. 

Various opinions were expressed, and various 
plans were proposed. The counsel which was 
finally followed was this. It would be danger- 
ous to receive Pompey, since that would make 
Caesar their enemy. It would be dangerous to 
refuse to receive him, as that would make Pom- 
pey their enemy, and, though powerless now, he 
might one day be in a condition to seek venge- 
ance. It was wisest, therefore, to destroy him. 
They would invite him to the shore, and kill him 
when he landed. This would please Caesar ; 
and Pompey himself, being dead, could never re- 
venge it. " Dead dogs," as the orator said who 
made this atrocious proposal, "do not bite." 

An Egyptian, named Achillas, was appointed 
to execute the assassination thus decreed. An 
invitation was sent to Pompey to land, accom- 
panied with a promise of protection ; and, when 
his fleet had approached near enough to the 
shore, Achillas took a small party in a boat, and 
went out to meet his galley. The men in this 
boat, of course, were armed. 

The officers and attendants of Pompey watch- 
ed all these movements from the deck of his 
galley.- They scrutinized every thing that oc- 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 185 

Suspicions of Pompey's friends. Entreaties of Cornelia. 

curred with the closest attention and the great- 
est anxiety, to see whether the indications de- 
noted an honest friendship or intentions of 
trpachery. The appearances were not favora- 
ble. Pompey's friends observed that no prepa- 
rations were making along the shore for receiv- 
ing him with the honors due, as they thought, 
to his rank and station. The manner, too, in 
which the Egyptians seemed . to expect him 
to land was ominous of evil. Only a single 
insignificant boat for a potentate who recent- 
ly had commanded half the world ! Then, be- 
sides, the friends of Pompey observed that sev- 
eral of the principal galleys of Ptolemy's fleet 
were getting up their anchors, and preparing 
apparently to be ready to move at a sudden call. 
These and other indications appeared much 
more like preparations for seizing an enemy 
than welcoming a friend. Cornelia, who, with 
her little son, stood upon the deck of Pompey's 
galley, watching the scene with a peculiar in- 
tensity of solicitude which the hardy soldiers 
around her could not have felt, became soon ex- 
ceedingly alarmed. She begged her husband 
not to go on shore. But Pompey decided that 
it was now too late to retreat. He could not 
escape from the Egyptian galleys if they had 



186 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Pompey's forlorn condition. He determines to land. 

received orders to intercept him, nor could he 
resist violence if violence were intended. To do 
any thing like that would evince distrust, and 
to appear like putting himself upon his guard 
would be to take at once, himself, the position 
of an enemy, and invite and justify the hostility 
of the Egyptians in return. As to flight, he 
could not hope to escape from the Egyptian gal- 
leys if they had received orders to prevent it ; 
and, besides, if he were determine<?Nfci attempt- 
ing an escape, whither should he fly ? The 
world was against him. His triumphant en- 
emy was on his track in full pursuit, with all 
the vast powers and resources of the whole Ro- 
man empire at his command. There remained 
for Pompey only the last forlorn hope of a refuge 
in Egypt, or else, as the sole alternative, a com- 
plete and unconditional submission to Caesar. 
His pride would not consent to this, and he de- 
termined, therefore, dark as the indications 
were, to place himself, without any appearance 
of distrust, in Ptolemy's hands, and abide the 
issue. 

The boat of Achillas approached the galley. 
When it touched the side, Achillas and the 
other officers on board of it hailed Pompey in 
the most respectful manner, giving him the title 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 187 

Preparations for landing. Pompey takes leave of his wife. 

of Imperator, the highest title known in the 
Roman state. Achillas addressed Pompey in 
Greek. The Greek was the language of edu- 
cated men in all the Eastern countries in those 
days. He told him that the water was too 
shallow for his galley to approach nearer to the 
shore, and invited him to come on board of his 
boat, and he would take him to the beach, where, 
as he said, the king was waiting to receive him. 

With nBftiy anxious forebodings, that were 
but ill concealed, Pompey made preparations to 
accept the invitation. He bade his wife fare- 
well, who clung to him as they were about to 
part with a gloomy presentiment that they 
should never meet asfain. Two centurions who 
were to accompany Pompey, and two servants, 
descended into the boat. Pompey himself fol- 
lowed, and then the boatmen pushed off from 
the galley and made toward the shore. The 
decks of all the vessels in Pompey's little squad- 
ron, as well as those of the Egyptian fleet, were 
crowded with spectators, and lines of soldiery 
and groups of men, all intently watching the 
operations of the landing, were scattered along 
the shore. 

Among the men whom Achillas had provid- 
ed to aid him in the assassination was an ofli- 



188 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 48. 

The assassins. Gloomy silence. 

cer of the Roman army who had formerly serv- 
ed under Pompey. As soon as Pompey was 
seated in the boat, he recognized the counte- 
nance of this man, and addressed him, saying, 
"I think I remember you as having been in for- 
mer days my fellow-soldier." The man replied 
merely by a nod of assent. Feeling somewhat 
guilty and self-condemned at the thoughts of 
the treachery which he w T as about to perpetrate, 
he was little inclined to renew the' recollection 
of the days when he was Pompey's friend. In 
fact, the whole company in the boat, filled on 
the one part with awe in anticipation of the ter- 
rible deed which they were soon to commit, 
and on the other with a dread suspense and 
alarm, were little disposed for conversation, 
and Pompey took out a manuscript of an ad- 
dress in Greek which he had prepared to make 
to the young king at his approaching interview 
with him, and occupied himself in reading it 
over. Thus they advanced in a gloomy and 
solemn silence, hearing no sound but the dip of 
the oars in the water, and the gentle dash of 
the waves along the line of the shore. 

At length the boat touched the sand, while 
Cornelia still stood on the deck of the galley, 
watching every movement with great solicitude 



B.C. 48.] Death of Pompey. 189 

Assassination of Pompey. Cornelia. 

and concern. One of the two servants whom 
Pompey had taken with him, named Philip, his 
favorite personal attendant, rose to assist his 
master in landing. He gave Pompey his hand 
to aid him in rising from his seat, and at that 
moment the Roman officer whom Pompey had 
recognized as his fellow-soldier, advanced behind 
him and stabbed him in the back. At the same 
instant Achillas and the others drew their 
swords. Pompey saw that all was lost. He 
did not speak, and he uttered no cry of alarm, 
though Cornelia's dreadful shriek was so loud 
and piercing that it was heard upon the shore. 
From the suffering victim himself nothing was 
heard but an inarticulate groan extorted by his 
agony. He gathered his mantle over his face, 
and sank down and died. 

Of course, all was now excitement and con- 
fusion. As soon as the deed was done, the per- 
petrators of it retired from the scene, taking 
the head of their unhappy victim with them, to 
offer to Caesar as proof that his enemy was re- 
ally no more. The officers who remained in 
the fleet which had brought Pompey to the 
coast made all haste to sail away, bearing the 
wretched Cornelia with them, utterly distract- 
ed with grief and despair, while Philip and his 



190 Julius Cjssar. [B.C. 48. 

The funeral pile. Pompey's ashes sent to Cornelia. 

fellow-servant remained upon the beach, stand- 
ing bewildered and stupefied over the headless 
body of their beloved master. Crowds of spec- 
tators came in succession to look upon the hid- 
eous spectacle a moment in silence, and then to 
turn, shocked and repelled, away. At length, 
when the first impulse of excitement had in 
some measure spent its force, Philip and his 
comrades so far recovered their composure as 
to begin to turn their thoughts to the only con- 
solation that was now left to them, that of per- 
forming the solemn duties of sepulture. They 
found the wreck of a fishing boat upon the 
strand, from which they obtained wood enough 
for a rude funeral pile. They burned what re- 
mained of the mutilated body, and, gathering 
up the ashes, they put them in an urn and 
sent tTiem to Cornelia, who afterward buried 
them at Alba with many bitter tears. 




HMM 



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B.C. 48.] Cesar in Egypt. 193 

Caesar after the battle of Pharsalia. His clemency. 



Chapter IX. 

CiESAR IN E GYPT. 

CiESAR surveyed the field of battle after 
the victory of Pharsalia, not with the feel- 
ings of exultation which might have been ex- 
pected in a victorious general, but with compas- 
sion and sorrow for the fallen soldiers whose 
dead bodies covered the ground. After gazing 
upon the scene sadly and in silence for a time, 
he said, " They would have it so," and thus 
dismissed from his mind all sense of his own 
responsibility for the consequences which had 
ensued. 

He treated the immense body of prisoners 
which had fallen into his hands with great clem- 
ency, partly from the natural impulses of his 
disposition, which were always generous and 
noble, and partly from policy, that he might 
conciliate them all, officers and soldiers, to ac- 
quiescence in his future rule. He then sent 
back a large portion of his force to Italy, and, 
taking a body of cavalry from the rest, in order 
that he might advance with the utmost possible 

N 



194 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 48. 

Csesar pursues Pompey. Treasures of the Temple of Diana. 

rapidity, he set off through Thessaly and Mac- 
edon in pursuit of his fugitive foe. 

He had no naval force at his command, and 
he accordingly kept upon the land. Besides, 
he wished, by moving through the country at 
the head of an armed force, to make a demon- 
stration which should put down any attempt 
that might be made in any quarter to rally or 
concentrate a force in Pompey's favor. He 
crossed the Hellespont, and moved down the 
coast of Asia Minor. There was a great tem- 
ple consecrated to Diana at Ephesus, which, 
for its wealth and magnificence, was then the 
wonder of the world. The authorities who had 
it in their charge, not aware of Caesar's ap- 
proach, had concluded to withdraw the treas- 
ures from the temple and loan them to Pompey, 
to be repaid when he should have regained his 
pow r er. An assembly was accordingly convened 
to witness the delivery of the treasures, and take 
note of their value, which ceremony was to be 
performed with great formality and parade, 
when they learned that Caesar had crossed the 
Hellespont and w r as drawing near. The whole 
proceeding was thus arrested, and the treasures 
were retained. 

Caesar passed rapidly on through Asia Minor, 



B.C. 48.] CiESAR in Egypt. 195 

Csesar in Asia Minor. He sails for Egypt. 

examining and comparing, as he advanced, the 
vague rumors which were continually coming 
in in respect to Pompey's movements. He 
learned at length that he had gone to Cyprus ; 
he presumed that his destination was Egypt, 
and he immediately resolved to provide himself 
with a fleet, and follow him thither by sea. As 
time passed on, and the news of Pompey's de- 
feat and flight, and of Csesar's triumphant pur- 
suit of him, became generally extended and con- 
firmed, the various powers ruling in all that re- 
gion of the world abandoned one after another 
the hopeless cause, and began to adhere to Cse- 
sar. They offered him such resources and aid 
as he might desire. He did not, however, stop 
to organize a large fleet or to collect an army. 
He depended, like Napoleon, in all the great 
movements of his life, not on grandeur of prep- 
aration, but on celerity of action. He organ- 
ized at Rhodes a small but very efficient fleet 
of ten galleys, and, embarking his best troops 
in them, he made sail for the coasts of Egypt. 
Pompey had landed at Pelusium, on the east- 
ern frontier, having heard that the young king 
and his court were there to meet and resist Cle- 
opatra's invasion. Csesar, however, with the 
characteristic boldness and energy of his char- 



196 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Caesar at Alexandria. The Roman fasces. 

acter, proceeded directly to Alexandria, the cap- 
ital. 

Egypt was, in those days, an ally of the Ro- 
mans, as the phrase was ; that is, the country, 
though it preserved its independent organiza- 
tion and its forms of royalty, was still united 
to the Roman people by an intimate league, so 
as to form an integral part of the great empire. 
Csesar, consequently, in appearing there with 
an armed force, would naturally be received as 
a friend. He found only the garrison which 
Ptolemy's government had left in charge of the 
city. At first the officers of this garrison gave 
him an outwardly friendly reception, but they 
soon began to take offense at the air of author- 
ity and command which he assumed, and which 
seemed to them to indicate a spirit of encroach- 
ment on the sovereignty of their own king. 

Feelings of deeply-seated alienation and ani- 
mosity sometimes find their outward expression 
in contests about things intrinsically of very 
little importance. It was so in this case. The 
Roman consuls were accustomed to use a cer- 
tain badge of authority called the fasces. It 
consisted of a bundle of rods, bound around the 
handle of an ax,* Whenever a consul appeared 

* For a representation of the fasces, see the illuminated 
title-page of this volume, in the border, on the right hand. 



B.C. 48.] Cjesar in Egypt. 197 

The lictors. Pompey's head sent to Csesar. 

in public, he was preceded by two officers called 
lictors, each of whom carried the fasces as a 
symbol of the power which was vested in the 
distinguished personage who followed them. 

The Egyptian officers and the people of the 
city quarreled with Csesar on account of his 
moving about among them in his imperial state, 
accompanied by a life guard, and preceded by 
the lictors. Contests occurred between his 
troops and those of the garrison, and many dis- 
turbances were created in the streets of the 
city. Although no serious collision took place, 
Csesar thought it prudent to strengthen his force, 
and he sent back to Europe for additional le- 
gions to come to Egypt and join him. 

The tidings of Pompey's death came to Cse- 
sar at Alexandria, and with them the head of 
the murdered man, which was sent by the gov- 
ernment of Ptolemy, they supposing that it 
would be an acceptable gift to Csesar. Instead 
of being pleased with it, Csesar turned from the 
shocking spectacle in horror. Pompey had been, 
for many years now gone by, Csesar's colleague 
and friend. He had been his son-in-law, and 
thus had sustained to him a very near and en- 
dearing relation. In the contest which had at 
last unfortunately arisen, Pompey had done no 



198 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 48. 

Caesar mourns Pompey. Pouipey's signet ring. 

wrong either to Caesar or to the government at 
Rome. He was the injured party, so far as 
there was a right and a wrong to such a quar- 
rel. And now, after being hunted through half 
the world by his triumphant enemy, he had been 
treacherously murdered by men pretending to 
receive him as a friend. The natural sense of 
justice, which formed originally so strong a trait 
in Caesar's character, was not yet wholly extin- 
guished. He could not but feel some remorse at 
the thoughts of the long course of violence and 
wrong which he had pursued against his old 
champion and friend, and which had led at last 
to so dreadful an end. Instead of being pleas- 
ed with the horrid trophy which the Egyptians 
sent him, he mourned the death of his great ri- 
val with sincere and unaffected grief, and was 
filled with indignation against his murderers. 

Pompey had a signet ring upon his finger at 
the time of his assassination, which was taken 
off by the Egyptian officers and carried away 
to Ptolemy, together with the other articles of 
value which had been found upon his person. 
Ptolemy sent this seal to Caesar to complete the 
proof that its possessor was no more. Caesar re- 
ceived this memorial with eager though mourn- 
ful pleasure, and he preserved it with great 



B.C. 48.] CiESAE in Egypt. 



199 



Caesar's respect for Pompey's memory. 



Pompey's Pillar. 



care. And in many ways, during all the re- 
mainder of his life, he manifested every outward 
indication of cherishing the highest respect for 
Pompey's memory. There stands to the pres- 
ent day, among the ruins of Alexandria, a beau- 
tiful column, about one hundred feet high, which 
has been known in all modern times as Pompey's 
Pillar. It is formed of stone, and is in three 




Pompey's Pillar. 



200 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 48. 

Origin of Pornpey's Pillar. Surrender of Pornpey's officers. 

parts. One stone forms the pedestal, another 
the shaft, and a third the capital. The beauty 
of this column, the perfection of its workman- 
ship, which still continues in excellent preser- 
vation, and its antiquity, so great that all dis- 
tinct record of its origin is lost, have combined 
to make it for many ages the wonder and ad- 
miration of mankind. Although no history of 
its origin has come down to us, a tradition has 
descended that Caesar built it during his resi- 
dence in Egypt, to commemorate the name of 
Pompey ; but whether it was his own victory 
over Pompey, or Pornpey's own character and 
military fame which the structure was intended 
to signalize to mankind, can not now be known. 
There is even some doubt whether it was erect- 
ed by Caesar at all. 

While Caesar was in Alexandria, many of 
Pornpey's officers, now that their master was 
dead, and there was no longer any possibility 
of their rallying again under his guidance and 
command, came in and surrendered themselves 
to him. He received them with great kindness, 
and, instead of visiting them with any penal- 
ties for having fought against him, he honored 
the fidelity and bravery they had evinced in the 
service of their own former master. Caesar had, 



B.C. 48.] C;esa.r in Egypt. 201 

CsBsar's generosity. His position at Alexandria. 

in fact, shown the same generosity to the sol- 
diers ofPompey's army that he had taken pris- 
oners at the battle of Pharsalia. At the close 
of the battle, he issued orders that each one of 
his soldiers should have permission to save one 
of the enemy. Nothing could more strikingly 
exemplify both the generosity and the tact that 
marked the great conqueror's character than 
this incident. The hatred and revenge which 
had animated his victorious soldiery in the battle 
and in the pursuit, were changed immediately 
by the permission to compassion and good will. 
The ferocious soldiers turned at once from the 
pleasure of hunting their discomfited enemies 
to death, to that of protecting and defending 
them ; and the way was prepared for their being 
received into his service, and incorporated with 
the rest of his army as friends and brothers. 

Csesar soon found himself in so strong a po- 
sition at Alexandria, that he determined to ex- 
ercise his authority as Roman consul to settle 
the dispute in respect to the succession of the 
Egyptian crown. There was no difficulty in 
finding pretexts for interfering in the affairs of 
Egypt. In the first place, there was, as he con- 
tended, great anarchy and confusion at Alex- 
andria, people taking different sides in the con- 



202 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 48. 

Caesars interference in Egyptian affairs. Cleopatra. 

troversy with such fierceness as to render it im- 
possible that good government and public order 
should be restored until this great question was 
settled. He also claimed a debt due from the 
Egyptian government, which Photinus, Ptole- 
my's minister at Alexandria, was very dilatory 
in paying. This led to animosities and dis- 
putes ; and, finally, Caesar found, or pretended to 
find, evidence that Photinus was forming plots 
against his life. At length Caesar determined 
on taking decided action. He sent orders both 
to Ptolemy and to Cleopatra to disband their 
forces, to repair to Alexandria, and lay their 
respective claims before him for his adjudication. 

Cleopatra complied with this summons, and 
returned to Egypt with a view to submitting 
her case to Caesar's arbitration. Ptolemy de- 
termined to resist. He advanced toward Egypt, 
but it was at the head of his army, and with a 
determination to drive Caesar and all his Roman 
followers away. 

When Cleopatra arrived, she found that the 
avenues of approach to Caesar's quarters were 
all in possession of her enemies, so that, in at- 
tempting to join him, she incurred danger of 
falling into their hands as a prisoner. She re- 
sorted to a stratagem, as the storv is. to gain a 

« *- o 



B.C. 48.] Caesar in Egypt. 203 

Caesar's guilty passion for Cleopatra. Resistance of Ptolemy. 

secret admission. They rolled her up in a sort 
of bale of bedding or carpeting, and she was 
carried in in this way on the back of a man, 
through the guards, who might otherwise have 
intercepted her. Caesar was very much pleased 
with this device, and with the successful result 
of it. Cleopatra, too, was young and beautiful, 
and Caesar immediately conceived a strong but 
guilty attachment to her, which she readily re- 
turned. Caesar espoused her cause, and decided 
that she and Ptolemy should jointly occupy the 
throne. 

Ptolemy and his partisans were determined 
not to submit to this award. The consequence 
was, a violent and protracted war. Ptolemy 
was not only incensed at being deprived of what 
he considered his just right to the realm, he was 
also half distracted at the thought of his sister's 
disgraceful connection with Caesar. His ex- 
citement and distress, and the exertions and ef- 
forts to which they aroused him, awakened a 
strong sympathy in his cause among the people, 
and Caesar found himself involved in a very se- 
rious contest, in which his own life was brought 
repeatedly into the most imminent danger, and 
which seriously threatened the total destruction 
of his power. He, however, braved all the dif- 



204 Julius Cmsar. [B.C. 48. 



The Alexandrine war. The Pharos. 

ficulty and dangers, and recklessly persisted in 
the course he had taken, under the influence of 
the infatuation in which his attachment to Cleo- 
patra held him, as by a spell. 

The war in which Csesar was thus involved 
by his efforts to give Cleopatra a seat with her 
brother on the Egyptian throne, is called in his- 
tory the Alexandrine war. It was marked by 
many strange and romantic incidents. There 
was a light-house, called the Pharos, on a small 
island opposite the harbor of Alexandria, and it 
was so famed, both on account of the great mag- 
nificence of the edifice itself, and also on account 
of its position at the entrance to the greatest 
commercial port in the world, that it has given 
its name, as a generic appellation, to all other 
structures of the kind — any light-house being 
now called a Pharos, just as any serious diffi- 
culty is called a Gordian knot. The Pharos 
was a lofty tower — the accounts say that it was 
five hundred feet in height, which would be an 
enormous elevation for such a structure — and 
in a lantern at the top a brilliant light was kept 
constantly burning, which could be seen over 
the water for a hundred miles. The tower was 
built in several successive stories, each being 
ornamented with balustrades, galleries, and col- 



B.C. 48.] Caesar in Egypt. 205 

Great splendor of the Pharos. It is captured by Caesar. 

umns, so that the splendor of the architecture 
by day rivaled the brilliancy of the radiation 
which beamed from the summit by night. Far 
and wide over the stormy waters of the Medi- 
terranean this meteor glowed, inviting and guid- 
ing the mariners in ; and both its welcome and 
its guidance were doubly prized in those ancient 
days, when there- was neither compass nor sex- 
tant on which they could rely. In the course 
of the contest with the Egyptians, Csesar took 
possession of the Pharos, and of the island on 
which it stood ; and as the Pharos was then 
regarded as one of the seven wonders of the 
world, the fame of the exploit, though it was 
probably nothing remarkable in a military point 
of view, spread rapidly throughout the world. 

And yet, though the capture of a light-house 
was no very extraordinary conquest, in the 
course of the contests on the harbor which were 
connected with it Caesar had a very narrow 
escape from death. In all such struggles he was 
accustomed always to take personally his full 
share of the exposure and the danger. This 
resulted in part from the natural impetuosity 
and ardor of his character, which were always 
aroused to double intensity of action by the ex- 
citement of battle, and partly from the ideas 



206 Julius Cjjsab. [B.C. 48. 

Situation of the Pharos. Caesar's personal danger. 

of the military duty of a commander which pre- 
vailed in those days. There was besides, in 
this case, an additional inducement to acquire 
the glory of extraordinary exploits, in Caesar's 
desire to be the object of Cleopatra's admira- 
tion, who watched all his movements, and who 
was doubly pleased with his prowess and brav- 
ery, since she saw that they were exercised for 
her sake and in her cause. 

The Pharos was built upon an island, which 
was connected by a pier or bridge with the main 
land. In the course of the attack upon this 
bridge, Caesar, with a party of his followers, got 
driven back and hemmed in by a body of the 
enemy that surrounded them, in such a place 
that the only mode of escape seemed to be by a 
boat, which might take them to a neighboring 
galley. They began, therefore, all to crowd into 
the boat in confusion, and so overloaded it that 
it was obviously in imminent danger of being 
upset or of sinking. The upsetting or sinking 
of an overloaded boat brings almost certain de- 
struction upon most of the passengers, whether 
swimmers or not, as they seize each other in 
their terror, and go down inextricably entangled 
together, each held by the others in the convul- 
sive grasp with which drowning men always 



B.C. 48.] Cjesas in Egypt. 207 

Caesar's narrow escape. The Alexandrian library. 

cling to whatever is within their reach. Caesar, 
anticipating this danger, leaped over into the 
sea and swam to the ship. He had some papers 
in his hand at the time — plans, perhaps, of the 
works which he was assailing. These he held 
above the water with his left hand, while he 
swam with the right. And to save his purple 
cloak or mantle, the emblem of his imperial 
dignity, which he supposed the enemy would 
eagerly seek to obtain as a trophy, he seized it 
by a corner between his teeth, and drew it after 
him through the water as he swam toward the 
galley. The boat which he thus escaped from 
soon after went down, with all on board. 

During the progress of this Alexandrine war 
one great disaster occurred, which has given to 
the contest a most melancholy celebrity in all 
subsequent ages : this disaster was the destruc- 
tion of the Alexandrian library. The Egyp- 
tians were celebrated for their learning, and, 
under the munificent patronage of some of their 
kings, the learned men of Alexandria had made 
an enormous collection of writings, which were 
inscribed, as was the custom in those days, on 
parchment rolls. The number of the rolls or 
volumes was said to be seven hundred thousand ; 
and when we consider that each one was writ- 



208 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 48. 

Burning of the Alexandrian library. Csesar returns to Rome. 

ten with great care, in beautiful characters, with 
a pen, and at a vast expense, it is not surprising 
that the collection was the admiration of the 
world. In fact, the whole body of ancient litera- 
ture was there recorded. Csesar set fire to some 
Egyptian galleys, which lay so near the shore 
that the wind blew the sparks and flames upon the 
buildings on the quay. The fire spread among 
the palaces and other magnificent edifices of that 
part of the city, and one of the great buildings 
in which the library was stored was reached and 
destroyed. There was no other such collection 
in the world ; and the consequence of this calam- 
ity has been, that it is only detached and insu- 
lated fragments of ancient literature and science 
that have come down to our times. The world 
will never cease to mourn the irreparable loss. 
Notwithstanding the various untoward inci- 
dents which attended the war in Alexandria 
during its progress, Csesar, as usual, conquered 
in the end. The young king Ptolemy was de- 
feated, and, in attempting to make his escape 
across a branch of the Nile, he was drowned. 
Caesar then finally settled the kingdom upon 
Cleopatra and a younger brother, and, after re- 
maining for some time longer in Egypt, he set 
out on his return to Rome. 



a I 




B.C.48.J Caesar in Egypt. 211 



Subsequent adventures of Cleopatra. Her splendid barge. 

The subsequent adventures of Cleopatra were 
so romantic as to have given her name a very 
wide celebrity. The lives of the virtuous pass 
smoothly and happily away, but the tale, when 
told to others, possesses but little interest or at- 
traction ; while those of the wicked, whose days 
are spent in wretchedness and despair, and are 
thus full of misery to the actors themselves, af- 
ford to the rest of mankind a high degree of 
pleasure, from the dramatic interest of the story. 

Cleopatra led a life of splendid sin, and, of 
course, of splendid misery. She visited Csesar 
in Rome after his return thither. Csesar re- 
ceived her magnificently, and paid her all pos- 
sible honors ; but the people of Rome regarded 
her with strong reprobation. When her young 
brother, whom Csesar had made her partner on 
the throne, was old enough to claim his share, 
she poisoned him. After Caesar's death, she 
went from Alexandria to Syria to meet An- 
tony, one of Csesar's successors, in a galley or 
barge, which was so rich, so splendid, so mag- 
nificently furnished and adorned, that it was 
famed throughout the world as Cleopatra's 
barge. A great many beautiful vessels have 
since been called by the same name. Cleopa- 
tra connected herself with Antonv, who became 



212 Julius C^esar. [B.C. 48. 

Antony and Octavius. Death of Cleopatra. 

infatuated with her beauty and her various 
charms as Csesar had been. After a great va- 
riety of romantic adventures, Antony was de- 
feated in battle by his great rival Octavius, and, 
supposing that he had been betrayed by Cleo- 
patra, he pursued her to Egypt, intending to 
kill her. She hid herself in a sepulcher, spread- 
ing a report that she had committed suicide, 
and then Antony stabbed himself in a fit of 
remorse and despair. Before he died, he learn- 
ed that Cleopatra was alive, and he caused him- 
self to be carried into her presence and died in 
her arms. Cleopatra then fell into the hands 
of Octavius, who intended to carry her to Rome 
to grace his triumph. To save herself from 
this humiliation, and weary with a life which, 
full of sin as it had been, was a constant series 
of sufferings, she determined to die. A servant 
brought in an asp for her, concealed in a vase 
of flowers, at a great banquet. She laid the 
poisonous reptile on her naked arm, and died 
immediately of the bite which it inflicted. 



B.C. 47.] Caesar Imperator. 213 

Caesar again at Rome. Combinations against him. 



Chapter X. 
Caesar Imperator. 

ALTHOUGH Pompey himself had been 
killed, and the army under his immediate 
command entirely annihilated, Caesar did not 
find that the empire was yet completely sub- 
missive to his sway. As the tidings of his con- 
quests spread over the vast and distant regions 
which were under the Roman rule — although 
the story itself of his exploits might have been 
exaggerated — the impression produced by his 
power lost something of its strength, as men 
generally have little dread of remote danger. 
While he was in Egypt, there were three great 
concentrations of power formed against him in 
other quarters of the globe : in Asia Minor, in 
Africa, and in Spain. In putting down these 
three great and formidable arrays of opposi- 
tion, Csesar made an exhibition to the world 
of that astonishing promptness and celerity of 
military action on which his fame as a general 
so much depends. He went first to Asia Minor, 
and fought a great and decisive battle there, in 



214 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 47. 

Veni, vidi, vici. Csesar made dictator. 

a manner so sudden and unexpected to the 
forces that opposed him that they found them- 
selves defeated almost before they suspected that 
their enemy was near. It was in reference to 
this battle that he wrote the inscription for the 
banner, "Veni, vidi, viciP The words may be 
rendered in English, "I came, looked, and con- 
quered," though the peculiar force of the ex- 
pression, as well as the alliteration, is lost in 
any attempt to translate it. 

In the mean time, Csesar's prosperity and 
success had greatly strengthened his cause at 
Rome. Rome was supported in a great meas- 
ure by the contributions brought home from the 
provinces by the various military heroes who 
were sent out to govern them ; and, of course, 
the greater and more successful was the con- 
queror, the better was he qualified for stations 
of highest authority in the estimation of the 
inhabitants of the city. They made Caesar 
dictator even while he was away, and appointed 
Mark Antony his master of horse. This was 
the same Antony whom we have already men- 
tioned as having been connected with Cleopatra 
after Csesar's death. Rome, in fact, was filled 
with the fame of Csesar's exploits, and, as he 
crossed the Adriatic and advanced toward the 



B.C. 47.] CiESAR Imperator. 215 

Opposition of Cato. Pompey's sons. 

city, he found himself the object of universal 
admiration and applause. 

But he could not yet be contented to estab- 
lish himself quietly at Rome. There was a 
large force organized against him in Africa un- 
der Cato, a stern and indomitable man, who had 
long been an enemy to Csesar, and who now 
considered him as a usurper and an enemy of 
the republic, and was determined to resist him 
to the last extremity. There was also a large 
force assembled in Spain under the command 
of two sons of Pompey , in whose case the or- 
dinary political hostility of contending partisans 
was rendered doubly intense and bitter by their 
desire to avenge their father's cruel fate. Csesar 
determined first to go to Africa, and then, after 
disposing of Cato's resistance, to cross the Medi- 
terranean into Spain. 

Before he could set out, however, on these 
expeditions, he was involved in very serious 
difficulties for a time, on account of a great dis- 
content which prevailed in his army, and which 
ended at last in open mutiny. The soldiers 
complained that they had not received the re- 
wards and honors which Caesar had promised 
them. Some claimed offices, others money, 
others lands, which, as they maintained, they 



216 Julius Cjssak. [B.C. 47. 

Complaints of the soldiers. They mutiny. 

had been led to expect would be conferred upon 
them at the end of the campaign. The fact 
undoubtedly was, that, elated with their suc- 
cess, and intoxicated with the spectacle of the 
boundless influence and power which their gen- 
eral so obviously wielded at Rome, they formed 
expectations and hopes for themselves altogether 
too wild and unreasonable to be realized by sol- 
diers ; for soldiers, however much they may be 
flattered by their generals in going into battle, 
or praised in the mass in official dispatches, are 
after all but slaves, and slaves, too, of the very 
humblest caste and character. 

The famous tenth legion, Csesar's favorite 
corps, took the most active part in fomenting 
these discontents, as might naturally have been 
expected, since the attentions and the praises 
which he had bestowed upon them, though at 
first they tended to awaken their ambition, and 
to inspire them with redoubled ardor and cour- 
age, ended, as such favoritism always does, in 
making them vain, self-important, and unreas- 
onable. Led on thus by the tenth legion, the 
whole army mutinied. They broke up the 
camp where they had been stationed at some 
distance beyond the walls of Rome, and march- 
ed toward the city. Soldiers in a mutiny, even 



B.C. 47.] Cesar Imperator. 217 

The army marches to Rome. Plan of the soldiers. 

though headed by their subaltern officers, are 
very little under command ; and these Roman 
troops, feeling released from their usual re- 
straints, committed various excesses on the 
way, terrifying the inhabitants and spreading 
universal alarm. The people of the city were 
thrown into utter consternation at the approach 
of the vast horde, which was coming like a ter- 
rible avalanche to descend upon them. 

The army expected some signs of resistance 
at the gates, which, if offered, they were pre- 
pared to encounter and overcome. Their plan 
was, after entering the city, to seek Csesar and 
demand their discharge from his service. They 
knew that he was under the necessity of im- 
mediately making a campaign in Africa, and 
that, of course, he could not possibly, as they 
supposed, dispense with them. He would, con- 
sequently, if they asked their discharge, beg 
them to remain, and, to induce them to do it, 
would comply with all their expectations and 
desires. 

Such was their plan. To tender, however, 
a resignation of an office as a means of bringing 
an opposite party to terms, is always a very 
hazardous experiment. We easily overrate the 
estimation in which our own services are held, 



218 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 47. 

The army marches into the city. The Campus Martius. 

taking what is said to us in kindness or cour- 
tesy by friends as the sober and deliberate judg- 
ment of the public ; and thus it often happens 
that persons who in such case offer to resign, 
are astonished to find their resignations readily 
accepted. 

When Caesar's mutineers arrived at the gates, 
they found, instead of opposition, only orders 
from Caesar, by which they were directed to 
leave all their arms except their swords, and 
march into the city. They obeyed. They 
w 7 ere then directed to go to the Campus Mar- 
tius, a vast parade ground situated within the 
walls, and to await Caesar's orders there. # 

Caesar met them in the Campus Martius, 
and demanded why they had left their encamp- 
ment without orders and come to the city. 
They stated in reply, as they had previously 
planned to do, that they wished to be discharged 
from the public service. To their great aston- 
ishment, Caesar seemed to consider this request 
as nothing at all extraordinary, but promised, 
on the other hand, very readily to grant it. He 
said that they should be at once discharged, and 
should receive faithfully all the rewards which 
had been promised them at the close of the war, 

* See map of the city of Rome, fronting the title-page. 



B.C. 47.] Cesar Imperator. 219 

Caesar's address to the army. Its effects. 

for their long and arduous services. At the 
same time, he expressed his deep regret that, 
to obtain what he was perfectly willing and 
ready at any time to grant, they should have 
so far forgotten their duties as Romans, and 
violated the discipline which should always be 
held absolutely sacred by every soldier. He 
particularly regretted that the tenth legion, on 
which he had been long accustomed so implicit- 
ly to rely, should have taken a part in such trans- 
actions. 

In making this address, Caesar assumed a 
kind and considerate, and even respectful tone 
toward his men, calling them Quirites instead 
of soldiers — an honorary mode of appellation, 
which recognized them as constituent members 
of the Roman commonwealth. The effect of 
the whole transaction was what might have 
been anticipated. A universal feeling was 
awakened throughout the whole army to return 
to their duty. They sent deputations to Caesar, 
begging not to be taken at their word, but to be 
retained in the service, and allowed to accom- 
pany him to Africa. After much hesitation 
and delay, Caesar consented to receive them 
again, all excepting the tenth legion, who, he 
said, had now irrevocably lost his confidence 



220 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 47. 

Attachment of Caesar's soldiers. Csesar goes to Africa. 

and regard. It is a striking illustration of the 
strength of the attachment which bound Csesar's 
soldiers to their commander, that the tenth le- 
gion would not be discharged, after all. They 
followed Csesar of their own accord into Africa, 
earnestly entreating him again and again to re- 
ceive them. He finally did receive them in de- 
tachments, which he incorporated with the rest 
of his army, or sent on distant service, but he 
would never organize them as the tenth legion 
again. 

It was now early in the winter, a stormy 
season for crossing the Mediterranean Sea. 
Csesar, however, set off from Rome immediate- 
ly, proceeded south to Sicily, and encamped on 
the sea-shore there till the fleet was ready to 
convey his forces to Africa. The usual fortune 
attended him in the African campaigns. His 
fleet was exposed to imminent dangers in cross- 
ing the sea, but, in consequence of the extreme 
deliberation and skill with which his arrange- 
ments were made, he escaped them all. He 
overcame one after another of the military dif- 
ficulties which were in his way in Africa. His 
army endured, in the depth of winter, great ex- 
posures and fatigues, and they had to encounter 
a great hostile force under the charge of Cato. 



B.C. 47.] C^sar Imperator. 221 

Cato shuts himself up in Africa. He stabs himself. 

They were, however, successful in every under- 
taking. Cato retreated at last to the city of 
Utica, where he shut himself up with the re- 
mains of his army ; but finding, at length, when 
Csesar drew near, that there was no hope or pos- 
sibility of making good his defense, and as his 
stern and indomitable spirit could not endure 
the thought of submission to one whom he con- 
sidered as an enemy to his country and a traitor, 
he resolved upon a very effectual mode of es- 
caping from his conqueror's power. 

He feigned to abandon all hope of defending 
the city, and began to make arrangements to 
facilitate the escape of his soldiers over the sea. 
He collected the vessels in the harbor, and al- 
lowed all to embark who were willing to take 
the risks of the stormy water. He took, appa- 
rently, great interest in the embarkations, and, 
when evening came on, he sent repeatedly down 
to the sea-side to inquire about the state of the 
wind and the progress of the operations. At 
length he retired to his apartment, and, when 
all was quiet in the house, he laid down upon 
his bed and stabbed himself with his sword. 
He fell from the bed by the blow, or else from 
the effect of some convulsive motion which the 
penetrating steel occasioned. His son and serv- 



222 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 47. 

Death of Cato. Folly of his suicide. 

ants, hearing the fall, came rushing into the 
room, raised him from the floor, and attempted 
to bind up and stanch the wound. Cato would 
not permit them to do it. He resisted them vi- 
olently as soon as he was conscious of what they 
intended. Finding that a struggle would only 
aggravate the horrors of the scene, and even 
hasten its termination, they left the bleeding 
hero to his fate, and in a few minutes he died. 
The character of Cato, and the circumstances 
under which his suicide was committed, makes 
it, on the whole, the most conspicuous act of 
suicide which history records; and the events 
which followed show in an equally conspicuous 
manner the extreme folly of the deed. In re- 
spect to its wickedness, Cato, not having had the 
light of Christianity before him, is to be lenient- 
ly judged. As to the folly of the deed, however, 
he is to be held strictly accountable. If he had 
lived and yielded to his conqueror, as he might 
have done gracefully and without dishonor, 
since all his means of resistance were exhaust- 
ed, Caesar would have treated him with gen- 
erosity and respect, and would have taken him 
to Rome ; and as within a year or two of this 
time Csesar himself was no more, Cato's vast 
influence and power might have been, and un- 



B.C. 47.] Cesar Imperator. 223 

Caesar in Spain. Defeat of Pompey's sons. 

doubtedly would have been, called most effectu- 
ally into action for the benefit of his country. 
If any one, in defending Cato, should say he 
could not foresee this, we reply, he could have 
foreseen it ; not the precise events, indeed, which 
occurred, but he could have foreseen that vast 
changes must take place, and new aspects of 
affairs arise, in which his powers would be called 
into requisition. We can always foresee in the 
midst of any storm, however dark and gloomy, 
that clear skies will certainly sooner or later 
come again ; and this is just as true metaphori- 
cally in respect to the vicissitudes of human 
life, as it is literally in regard to the ordinary 
phenomena of the skies. 

From Africa Csesar returned to Rome, and 
from Rome he went to subdue the resistance 
which was offered by the sons of Pompey in 
Spain. He was equally successful here. The 
oldest son was wounded in battle, and was car- 
ried off from the field upon a litter faint and 
almost dying. He recovered in some degree, 
and, finding escape from the eager pursuit of 
Ceesar's soldiers impossible, he concealed him- 
self in a cave, where he lingered for a little 
time in destitution and misery. He was dis- 
covered at last ; his head was cut off by his 



224 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 47. 

CaBsar's triumphs. The triumphal car breaks down. 

captors and sent to Caesar, as his fathers had 
been. The younger son succeeded in escaping, 
but. he became a wretched fugitive and outlaw, 
and all manifestations of resistance to Caesar's 
sway disappeared from Spain. The conqueror 
returned to Rome the undisputed master of the 
whole Roman world. 

Then came his triumphs. Triumphs were 
great celebrations, by which military heroes in 
the days of the Roman commonwealth signal- 
ized their victories on their return to the city. 
Caesar's triumphs were four, one for each of his 
four great successful campaigns, viz., in Egypt, 
in Asia Minor, in Africa, and in Spain. Each 
was celebrated on a separate day, and there was 
an interval of several days between them, to 
magnify their importance, and swell the general 
interest which they excited among the vast 
population of the city. On one of these days, 
the triumphal car in which Caesar rode, which 
was most magnificently adorned, broke down on 
the way, and Caesar was nearly thrown out of 
it by the shock. The immense train of cars, 
horses, elephants, flags, banners, captives, and 
trophies which formed the splendid procession 
was all stopped by the accident, and a consider- 
able delay ensued. Night came on, in fact, 



B.C. 47.] CiESAR Imperator. 227 

Elephant torch-bearers. Trophies and emblems. 

before the column could again be put in motion 
to enter the city, and then Csesar, whose genius 
was never more strikingly shown than when he 
had opportunity to turn a calamity to advant- 
age, conceived the idea of employing the forty 
elephants of the train as torch-bearers ; the 
long procession accordingly advanced through 
the streets and ascended to the Capitol, lighted 
by the great blazing flambeaus which the sa- 
gacious and docile beasts were easily taught to 
bear, each elephant holding one in his proboscis, 
and waving it above the crowd around him. 

In these triumphal processions, every thing 
was borne in exhibition which could serve as a 
symbol of the conquered country or a trophy of 
victory. Flags and banners taken from the 
enemy; vessels of gold and silver, and other 
treasures, loaded in vans ; wretched captives 
conveyed in open carriages or marching sor- 
rowfully on foot, and destined, some of them, 
to public execution when the ceremony of the 
triumph w T as ended ; displays of arms, and im- 
plements, and dresses, and all else which might 
serve to give the Roman crowd an idea of the 
customs and usages of the remote and conquered 
nations ; the animals they used, caparisoned in 
the manner in which they used them : these, 



228 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 47. 

Banners and paintings. Public entertainmenis. 

and a thousand other trophies and emblems, 
were brought into the line to excite the admira- 
tion of the crowd, and to add to the gorgeous- 
ness of the spectacle. In fact, it was always a 
great object of solicitude and exertion with all 
the Roman generals, when on distant and dan- 
gerous expeditions, to possess themselves of 
every possible prize in the progress of their cam- 
paign which could aid in adding splendor to the 
triumph which was to signalize its end. 

In these triumphs of Caesar, a young sister 
of Cleopatra was in the line of the Egyptian 
procession. In that devoted to Asia Minor was 
a great banner containing the words already re- 
ferred to, Veni, Vidi, Vici. There were great 
paintings, too, borne aloft, representing battles 
and other striking scenes. Of course, all Rome 
was in the highest state of excitement during 
the days of the exhibition of this pageantry. 
The whole surrounding country flocked to the 
capital to witness it, and Caesar's greatness and 
glory were signalized in the most conspicuous 
manner to all mankind. 

After these triumphs, a series of splendid 
public entertainments were given, over twenty 
thousand tables having been spread for the pop- 
ulace of the city. Shows of every possible char-- 



B.C. 47.] Caesar Imperator. 229 

Various spectacles and amusements. Naval combats. 

acter and variety were exhibited. There were 
dramatic plays, and equestrian performances in 
the circus, and gladiatorial combats, and battles 
with wild beasts, and dances, and chariot races, 
and every other imaginable amusement which 
could be devised and carried into effect to grat- 
ify a population highly cultivated in all the arts 
of life, but barbarous and cruel in heart and char- 
acter. Some of the accounts which have come 
down to us of the magnificence of the scale on 
which these entertainments were conducted 
are absolutely incredible. It is said, for ex- 
ample, that an immense basin was constructed 
near the Tiber, large enough to contain two 
fleets of galleys, which had on board two thou- 
sand rowers each, and one thousand fighting 
men. These fleets were then manned with 
captives, the one with Asiatics and the other 
with Egyptians, and when all was ready, they 
were compelled to fight a real battle for the 
amusement of the spectators which thronged 
the shores, until vast numbers were killed, and 
the waters of the lake were dyed with blood. 
It is also said that the whole Forum, and some 
of the great streets in the neighborhood where 
the principal gladiatorial shows were held, were 
covered with silken awnings to protect the vast 



230 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 47. 

Caesar's power. Honors conferred upon him. 

crowds of spectators from the sun, and thou- 
sands of tents were erected to accommodate the 
people from the surrounding country, whom the 
buildings of the city could not contain. 

All open opposition to Caesar's power and do- 
minion now entirely disappeared. Even the 
Senate vied with the people in rendering him 
every possible honor. The supreme power had 
been hitherto lodged in the hands of two consuls, 
chosen annually, and the Roman people had 
been extremely jealous of any distinction for 
any one higher than that of an elective annual 
office, with a return to private life again when 
the brief period should have expired. They now, 
however, made Caesar, in the first place, consul 
for ten years, and then Perpetual Dictator. 
They conferred upon him the title of the Father 
of his Country. The name of the month in 
which 'he was born was changed to Julius, from 
his praenomen, and we still retain the name. He 
was made, also, commander-in-chief of all the 
armies of the commonwealth, the title to which 
vast military power was expressed in the Latin 
language by the word Imperator. 

Caesar was highly elated with all these sub- 
stantial proofs of the greatness and glory to 
which he had attained, and was also very evi- 



B.C. 47.] Cesar Imperator. 231 

Statues of Csesar. His plans of internal improvement. 

dently gratified with smaller, but equally ex- 
pressive proofs of the general regard. Statues 
representing his person were placed in the pub- 
lic edifices, and borne in processions like those 
of the gods. Conspicuous and splendidly orna- 
mented seats were constructed for him in all the 
places of public assembly, and on these he sat 
to listen to debates or witness spectacles, as if 
he were upon a throne. He had, either by his 
influence or by his direct power, the control of 
all the appointments to office, and was, in fact, 
in every thing but the name, a sovereign and an 
absolute king. 

He began now to form great schemes of in- 
ternal improvement for the general benefit of 
the empire. He wished to increase still more 
the great obligations which the Roman people 
were under to him for w T hat he had already 
done. They really were under vast obligations 
to him ; for, considering Rome as a community 
which was to subsist by governing the world, 
Caesar had immensely enlarged the means of 
its subsistence by establishing its sway every 
where, and providing for an incalculable increase 
of its revenues from the tribute and the taxation 
of conquered provinces and kingdoms. Since 
this work of conquest was now completed, he 



232 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 47. 

Ancient division of time. Change effected by Csesar. 

turned his attention to the internal affairs of the 
empire, and made many improvements in the 
system of administration, looking carefully into 
every thing, and introducing every where those 
exact and systematic principles which such a 
mind as his seeks instinctively in every thing 
over which it has any control. 

One great change which he effected continues 
in perfect operation throughout Europe to the 
present day. It related to the division of time. 
The system of months in use in his day corre- 
sponded so imperfectly with the annual circuit 
of the sun, that the months were moving con- 
tinually along the year in such a manner that 
the winter months came at length in the sum- 
mer, and the summer months in the winter. 
This led to great practical inconveniences ; for 
whenever, for example, any thing was required 
by law to be done in certain months, intending 
to have them done in the summer, and the 
specified month came at length to be a winter 
month, the law would require the thing to be 
done in exactly the wrong season. Caesar reme- 
died all this by adopting a new system of 
months, which should give three hundred and 
sixty-five days to the year for three years, and 
three hundred and sixty-six for the fourth ; and 



B.C. 47.] CiESAR Imperator. 233 

The old and new styles. Magnificent schemes. 

so exact was the system which he thus intro- 
duced, that it went on unchanged for sixteen 
centuries. The months were then found to be 
eleven days out of the way, when a new cor- 
rection was introduced, # and it will now go 
on three thousand years before the error will 
amount to a single day. Csesar employed a 
Greek astronomer to arrange the system that 
he adopted ; and it was in part on account of 
the improvement which he thus effected that 
one of the months, as has already been men- 
tioned, was called July. Its name before was 
Quintilis. 

Csesar formed a great many other vast and 
magnificent schemes. He planned public build- 
ings for the city, which were going to exceed in 
magnitude and splendor all the edifices of the 
world. He commenced the collection of vast 
libraries, formed plans for draining the Pontine 
Marshes, for bringing great supplies of water 
into the city by an aqueduct, for cutting a new 
passage for the Tiber from Rome to the sea, 
and making an enormous artificial harbor at its 
mouth. He was going to make a road along 
the Apennines, and cut a canal through the 

* By Pope Gregory XIII., at the time of the change from 
the old style to the new. 



234 Julius Cjes a r. [B.C. 47. 

Caesar collects the means to carry out his vast schemes. 

Isthmus of Corinth, and construct other vast 
works, which were to make Rome the center of 
the commerce of the world. In a word, his 
head was filled with the grandest schemes, and 
he was gathering around him all the means and 
resources necessary for the execution of them. 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 235 

Jealousies awakened by Caesar's power. The Roman Constitution; 



Chapter XL 

The Conspiracy. 

/"^liESAR'S greatness and glory came at last 
^-^ to a very sudden and violent end. He was 
assassinated. All the attendant circumstances 
of this deed, too, were of the most extraordinary 
character, and thus the dramatic interest which 
adorns all parts of the great conqueror's history 
marks strikingly its end. 

His prosperity and power awakened, of course, 
a secret jealousy and ill will. Those who were 
disappointed in their expectations of his favor 
murmured. Others, who had once been his 
rivals, hated him for having triumphed over 
them. Then there was a stern spirit of democ- 
racy, too, among certain classes of the citizens 
of Rome which could not brook a master. It 
is true that the sovereign power in the Roman 
commonwealth had never been shared by all the 
inhabitants. It was only in certain privileged 
classes that the sovereignty was vested ; but 
among these the functions of government were 
divided and distributed in such a way as to 



236 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 44. 

Struggles and conflicts. Roman repugnance to royalty. 

balance one interest against another, and to give 
all their proper share of influence and authority. 
Terrible struggles and conflicts often occurred 
among these various sections of society, as one 
or another attempted from time to time to en- 
croach upon the rights or privileges of the rest. 
These struggles, however, ended usually in at 
last restoring again the equilibrium which had 
been disturbed. No one power could ever gain 
the entire ascendency ; and thus, as all monarch- 
ism seemed excluded from their system, they 
called it a republic. Csesar, however, had now 
concentrated in himself all the principal elements 
of power, and there began to be suspicions that 
he wished to make himself in name, and openly 
as well as secretly and in fact, a king. 

The Romans abhorred the very name of king. 
They had had kings in the early periods of their 
history, but they made themselves odious by 
their pride and their oppressions, and the people 
had deposed and expelled them. The modern 
nations of Europe have several times performed 
the same exploit, but they have generally felt 
unprotected and ill at ease without a personal 
sovereign over them, and have accordingly, in 
most cases, after a few years, restored some 
branch of the expelled dynasty to the throne. 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 237 



Firmness of the Romans. Caesar's ambitious plans. 

The Romans were more persevering and firm. 
They had managed their empire now for five 
hundred years as a republic, and though they 
had had internal dissensions, conflicts, and quar- 
rels without end, had persisted so firmly and 
unanimously in their detestation of all regal 
authority, that no one of the long lino of ambi- 
tious and powerful statesmen, generals, or con- 
querors by which the history of the empire had 
been signalized, had ever dared to aspire to the 
name of king. 

There began, however, soon to appear some 
indications that Caesar, who certainly now pos- 
sessed regal power, would like the regal name. 
Ambitious men, in such cases, do not directly 
assume themselves the titles and symbols of 
royalty. Others make the claim for them, while 
they faintly disavow it, till they have oppor- 
tunity to see what effect the idea produces on 
the public mind. The following incidents oc- 
curred which it was thought indicated such a 
design. 

There were in some of the public buildings 
certain statues of kings ; for it must be under- 
stood that the Roman dislike to kings was only 
a dislike to having kingly authority exercised 
over themselves. They respected and some- 



23S Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

Regal power. American feeling. 

times admired the kings of other countries, and 
honored their exploits, and made statues to com- 
memorate their fame. They were willing that 
kings should reign elsewhere, so long as there 
were no king of Rome. The American feeling 
at the present day is much the same. If the 
Queen of England were to make a progress 
through this country, she would receive, per- 
haps, as many and as striking marks of atten- 
tion and honor as would be rendered to her in 
her own realm. We venerate the antiquity of 
her royal line ; we admire the efficiency of her 
government and the sublime grandeur of her 
empire, and have as high an idea as any of the 
powers and prerogatives of her crown — and these 
feelings would show themselves most abund- 
antly on any proper occasion. We are willing, 
nay, wish that she should continue to reign over 
Englishmen ; and yet, after all, it would take 
some millions of bayonets to place a queen se- 
curely upon a throne over this land. 

Regal power was accordingly, in the ab- 
stract, looked up to at Rome, as it is elsewhere, 
with great respect ; and it was, in fact, all the 
more tempting as an object of ambition, from the 
determination felt by the people that it should 
not be exercised there. There were, according- 



B.C. 44] The Conspiracy. 239 

Caesar's seat in the theater. Public celebrations. 

ly, statues of kings at Rome. Csesar placed 
his own statue among them. Some approved, 
others murmured. 

There was a public theater in the city, where 
the officers of the government were accustom- 
ed to sit in honorable seats prepared expressly 
for them, those of the Senate being higher 
and more distinguished than the rest. Caesar 
had a seat prepared for himself there, sim- 
ilar in form to a throne, and adorned it mag- 
nificently with gilding and ornaments of gold, 
which gave it the entire pre-eminence over all 
the other seats. 

He had a similar throne placed in the senate 
chamber, to be occupied by himself when at- 
tending there, like the throne of the King of En- 
gland in the House of Lords. 

He held, moreover, a great many public cel- 
ebrations and triumphs in the city in commem- 
oration of his exploits and honors ; and, on one 
of these occasions, it was arranged that the 
Senate were to come to him at a temple in a 
body, and announce to him certain decrees 
which they had passed to his honor. Vast 
crowds had assembled to witness the ceremony. 
Csesar was seated in a magnificent chair, which 
might have been called either a chair or a throne, 



240 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 44. 

Caesar receives the Senate sitting. Consequent excitement. 

and was surrounded by officers and attendants. 
When the Senate approached, Caesar did not 
rise to receive them, but remained seated, like 
a monarch receiving a deputation of his sub- 
jects. The incident would not seem to be in 
itself of any great importance, but, considered 
as an indication of Caesar's designs, it attracted 
great attention, and produced a very general ex- 
citement. The act was adroitly managed so 
as to be somewhat equivocal in its character, in 
order that it might be represented one way or 
the other on the following day, according as the 
indications of public sentiment might incline. 
Some said that Caesar was intending to rise, 
but was prevented, and held down by those who 
stood around him. Others said that an officer 
motioned to him to rise, but he rebuked his in- 
terference by a frown, and continued his seat. 
Thus while, in fact, he received the Roman 
Senate as their monarch and sovereign, his own 
intentions and designs in so doing were left 
somewhat in doubt, in order to avoid awakening 
a sudden and violent opposition. 

Not long after this, as he was returning in 
public from some great festival, the streets being 
full of crowds, and the populace following him 
in great throngs with loud acclamations, a man 



B.C.44.J The Conspiracy. 241 

Caesar's statue crowned. Caesar's disavowals. 

went up to his statue as he passed it, and 
placed upon the head of it a laurel crown, fast- 
ened with a white ribbon, which was a badge 
of royalty. Some officers ordered the ribbon 
to be taken down, and sent the man to prison. 
Caesar was very much displeased with the offi- 
cers, and dismissed them from their office. He 
wished, he said, to have the opportunity to dis- 
avow, himself, such claims, and not to have 
others disavow them for him. 

Caesar's disavowals were, however, so faint, 
and people had so little confidence in their sin- 
cerity, that the cases became more and more 
frequent in which the titles and symbols of roy- 
alty were connected with his name. The people 
who wished to gain his favor saluted him in 
public with the name of Rex, the Latin word 
for king. He replied that his name was Caesar, 
not Rex, showing, however, no other signs of 
displeasure. On one great occasion, a high pub- 
lic officer, a near relative of his, repeatedly 
placed a diadem upon his head, Caesar himself, 
as often as he did it, gently putting it off. At 
last he sent the diadem away to a temple that 
was near, saying that there was no king in 
Rome but Jupiter. In a word, all his conduct 
indicated that he wished to have it appear that 

Q 



242 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

Some willing to make Csesar king. Others oppose it. 

the people were pressing the crown upon him, 
when he himself was steadily refusing it. 

This state of things produced a very strong 
and universal, though suppressed excitement in 
the city. Parties were formed. Some began 
to be willing to make Caesar king ; others were 
determined to hazard their lives to prevent it. 
None dared, however, openly to utter their sen- 
timents on either side. They expressed them 
by mysterious looks and dark intimations. At 
the time when Caesar refused to rise to receive 
the Senate, many of the members withdrew in 
silence, and with looks of offended dignity. 
When the crown was placed upon his statue or 
upon his own brow, a portion of the populace 
would applaud with loud acclamations ; and 
whenever he disavowed these acts, either by 
words or counter- actions of his own, an equally 
loud acclamation would arise from the other 
side. On the whole, however, the idea that 
Caesar was gradually advancing toward the 
kingdom steadily gained ground. 

And yet Caesar himself spoke frequently with 
great humility in respect to his pretensions and 
claims ; and when he found public sentiment 
turning against the ambitious schemes he seems 
secretly to have cherished, he would present 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 243 

Caesar's pretexts. His assumed humility. 

some excuse or explanation for his conduct plau- 
sible enough to answer the purpose of a disa- 
vowal. When he received the Senate, sitting 
like a king, on the occasion before referred to, 
when they read to him the decrees which they 
had passed in his favor, he replied to them that 
there was more need of diminishing the public 
honors which he received than of increasing 
them. When he found, too, how much excite- 
ment his conduct on that occasion had produced, 
he explained it by saying that he had retained 
his sitting posture on account of the infirmity 
of his health, as it made him dizzy to stand. 
He thought, probably, that these pretexts would 
tend to quiet the strong and turbulent spirits 
around him, from whose envy or rivalry he had 
most to fear, without at all interfering with the 
effect which the act itself would have produced 
upon the masses of the population. He wished, 
in a word, to accustom them to see him assume 
the position and the bearing of a sovereign, 
while, by his apparent humility in his inter- 
course with those immediately around him, he 
avoided as much as possible irritating and 
arousing the jealous and watchful rivals who 
were next to him in power. 

If this were his plan, it seemed to be advanc- 



244 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

Progress of Caesar's plans. The Sibylline books. 

ing prosperously toward its accomplishment. 
The population of the city seemed to become 
more and more familiar with the idea that Csesar 
was about to become a king. The opposition 
which the idea had at first awakened appeared 
to subside, or, at least, the public expression of 
it, which daily became more and more determ- 
ined and dangerous, was restrained. At length 
the time arrived when it appeared safe to intro- 
duce the subject to the Roman Senate. This, 
of course, was a hazardous experiment. It was 
managed, however, in a very adroit and ingeni- 
ous manner. 

There were in Rome, and, in fact, in many 
other cities and countries of the world in those 
days, a variety of prophetic books, called the 
Sibylline Oracles, in which it was generally be- 
lieved that future events were foretold. Some 
of these volumes or rolls, which were very an- 
cient and of great authority, were preserved in 
the temples at Rome, under the charge of a 
board of guardians, who were to keep them with 
the utmost care, and to consult them on great 
occasions, in order to discover beforehand what 
would be the result of public measures or great 
enterprises which were in contemplation. It 
happened that at this time the Romans were 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 245 

Declaration of the Sibylline' books. Plan for crowning Csesar. 

engaged in a war with the Parthians, a very 
wealthy and powerful nation of Asia. Caesar 
was making preparations for an expedition to 
the East to attempt to subdue this people. He 
gave orders that the Sibylline Oracles should 
be consulted. The proper officers, after con- 
sulting them with the usual solemn ceremonies, 
reported to the Senate that they found it re- 
corded in these sacred prophecies that the Par- 
thians could not be conquered except by a king. 
A senator proposed, therefore, that, to meet the 
emergency, Caesar should be made king during 
the war. There was at first no decisive action 
on this proposal. It was dangerous to express 
any opinion. People were thoughtful, serious, 
and silent, as on the eve of some great convul- 
sion. No one knew what others were meditat- 
ing, and thus did not dare to express his own 
wishes or designs. There soon, however, was 
a prevailing understanding that Caesar's friends 
were determined on executing the design of 
crowning him, and that the fifteenth of March, 
called, in their phraseology, the Ides of March, 
was fixed upon as the coronation day. 

In the mean time, Caesar's enemies, though 
to all outward appearance quiet and calm, had 
not been inactive. Finding that his plans were 



246 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 44. 

The conspiracy. Cassius. Marcus Brutus. 

now ripe for execution, and that they had no 
open means of resisting them, they formed a 
conspiracy to assassinate Caesar himself, and 
thus bring his ambitious schemes to an effectual 
and final end. The name of the original leader 
of this conspiracy was Cassius. 

Cassius had been for a long time Caesar's 
personal rival and enemy. He was a man of 
a very violent and ardent temperament, impet- 
uous and fearless, very fond of exercising power 
himself, but very restless and uneasy in having 
it exercised over him. He had all the Roman 
repugnance to being under the authority of a 
master, with an additional personal determina- 
tion of his own not to submit to Caesar. He 
determined to slay Caesar rather than to allow 
him to be made a king, and he went to work, 
with great caution, to bring other leading and 
influential men to join him in this determina- 
tion. Some of those to whom he applied said 
that they would unite with him in his plot pro- 
vided he would get Marcus Brutus to join them. 

Brutus was the praetor of the city. The 
praetorship of the city was a very high munici- 
pal office. The conspirators wished to have 
Brutus join them partly on account of his sta- 
tion as a magistrate, as if they supposed that 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 247 

Character of Brutus. His firmness and courage. 

by having the highest public magistrate of the 
city for their leader in the deed, the destruction 
of their victim would appear less like a murder, 
and would be invested, instead, in some re- 
spects, with the sanctions and with the dignity 
of an official execution. 

Then, again, they wished for the moral sup- 
port which would be afforded them in their des- 
perate enterprise by Brutus's extraordinary per- 
sonal character. He was younger than Cas- 
sius, but he was grave, thoughtful, taciturn, 
calm — a man of inflexible integrity, of the cool- 
est determination, and, at the same time, of the 
most undaunted courage. The conspirators dis- 
trusted one another, for the resolution of im- 
petuous men is very apt to fail when the emer- 
gency arrives which puts it to the test ; but as 
for Brutus, they knew very well that whatever 
he undertook he would most certainly do. 

There was a great deal even in his name. It 
was a Brutus that five centuries before had been 
the main instrument of the expulsion of the Ro- 
man kings. He had secretly meditated the de- 
sign, and, the better to conceal it, had feigned 
idiocy, as the story was, that he might not be 
watched or suspected until the favorable hour 
for executing his design should arrive. He 



248 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

The ancient Brutus. His expulsion of the kings. 

therefore ceased to speak, and seemed to lose 
his reason ; he wandered about the city silent 
and gloomy, like a brute. His name had been 
Lucius Junius before. They added Brutus 
now, to designate his condition. When at last, 
however, the crisis arrived which he judged fa- 
vorable for the expulsion of the kings, he sud- 
denly reassumed his speech and his reason, 
called the astonished Romans to arms, and tri- 
umphantly accomplished his design. His name 
and memory had been cherished ever since that 
day as of a great deliverer. 

They, therefore, who looked upon Csesar as 
another king, naturally turned their thoughts to 
the Brutus of their day, hoping to find in him 
another deliverer. Brutus found, from time to 
time, inscriptions on his ancient namesake's 
statue expressing the wish that he were now 
alive. He also found each morning, as he came 
to the tribunal where he was accustomed to sit 
in the discharge of the duties of his office, brief 
writings, which had been left there during the 
night, in which few words expressed deep mean- 
ing, such as " Awake, Brutus, to thy duty ;" 
and " Art thou indeed a Brutus IP 

Still it seemed hardly probable that Brutus 
could be led to take a decided stand against 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 249 

The history of Brutus. His obligations to Csesar. 

Caesar, for they had been warm personal friends 
ever since the conclusion of the civil wars. Bru- 
tus had, indeed, been on Pompey's side while 
that general lived ; he fought with him at the 
battle of Pharsalia, but he had been taken pris- 
oner there, and Caesar, instead of executing him 
as a traitor, as most victorious generals in a 
civil war would have done, spared his life, for- 
gave him for his hostility, received him into his 
own service, and afterward raised him to very 
high and honorable stations. He gave him the 
government of the richest province, and, after 
his return from it, loaded with wealth and hon- 
ors, he made him prsetor of the city. In a word, 
it would seem that he had done every thing 
which it was possible to do to make him one of 
his most trustworthy and devoted friends. The 
men, therefore, to whom Cassius first applied, 
perhaps thought that they were very safe in 
saying that they would unite in the intended 
conspiracy if he would get Brutus to join them. 
They expected Cassius himself to make the 
attempt to secure the co-operation of Brutus, as 
Cassius was on terms of intimacy with him on 
account of a family connection. Cassius's wife 
was the sister of Brutus. This had made the 
two men intimate associates and warm friends 



250 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 44. 

Csesar's friendship for Brutus. Interview between Brutus and Caesar. 

in former years, though they had been recently 
somewhat estranged from each other on account 
of having been competitors for the same offices 
and honors. In these contests Caesar had de- 
cided in favor of Brutus. " Cassius," said he, 
on one such occasion, " gives the best reasons ; 
but I can not refuse Brutus any thing he asks 
for." In fact, Caesar had conceived a strong 
personal friendship for Brutus, and believed him 
to be entirely devoted to his cause. 

Cassius, however, sought an interview with 
Brutus, with a view of engaging him in his de- 
sign. He easily effected his own reconciliation 
with him, as he had himself been the offended 
party in their estrangement from each other. 
He asked Brutus whether he intended to be 
present in the Senate on the Ides of March, 
when the friends of Caesar, as was understood, 
were intending to present him with the crown. 
Brutus said he should not be there. " But sup- 
pose," said Cassius, " we are specially sum- 
moned." "Then," said Brutus, "I shall go, 
and shall be ready to die if necessary to defend 
the liberty of my country." 

Cassius then assured Brutus that there were 
many other Roman citizens, of the highest rank, 
who were animated by the same determination, 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 251 

Arguments of Cassius. Effect on Brutus. 

and that they all looked up to him to lead and 
direct them in the work which it was now very 
evident must be done. " Men look," said Cas- 
sius, "to other praetors to entertain them with 
games, spectacles, and shows, but they have 
very different ideas in respect to you. Your 
character, your name, your position, your an- 
cestry, and the course of conduct which you 
have already always pursued, inspire the whole 
city with the hope that you are to be their de- 
liverer. The citizens are all ready to aid you, 
and to sustain you at the hazard of their lives ; 
but they look to you to go forward, and to act 
in their name and in their behalf, in the crisis 
which is now approaching." 

Men of a very calm exterior are often sus- 
ceptible of the profoundest agitations within, 
the emotions seeming to be sometimes all the 
more permanent and uncontrollable from the 
absence of outward display. Brutus said little, 
but his soul was excited and fired by Cassius's 
words. There was a struggle in his soul be- 
tween his grateful sense of his political obliga- 
tions to Csesar and his personal attachment to 
him on the one hand, and, on the other, a cer- 
tain stern Roman conviction that every thing 
should be sacrificed, even friendship and grati- 



252 Julius CiESAR. [B.C. 44. 

Brutus engages in the conspiracy. Ligurius. 

tude, as well as fortune and life, to the welfare 
of his country. He acceded to the plan, and 
began forthwith to enter upon the necessary 
measures for putting it into execution. 

There was a certain general, named Ligu- 
rius, who had been in Pompey's army, and 
whose hostility to Caesar had never been really 
subdued. He was now sick. Brutus went to 
see him. He found him in his bed. The ex- 
citement in Rome was so intense, though the 
expressions of it were suppressed and restrained, 
that every one was expecting continually some 
great event, and every motion and look was in- 
terpreted to have some deep meaning. Ligu- 
rius read in the countenance of Brutus, as he 
approached his bedside, that he had not come on 
any trifling errand. " Ligurius," said Brutus, 
"this is not a time for you to be sick." "Bru- 
tus," replied Ligurius, rising at once from his 
couch, " if you have any enterprise in mind that 
is worthy of you, I am well." Brutus explained 
to the sick man their design, and he entered into 
it with ardor. 

The plan was divulged to one after another 
of such men as the conspirators supposed most 
worthy of confidence in such a desperate under- 
taking, and meetings for consultation were held 



B.C. 44.] The Conspiracy. 253 

Consultations of the conspirators. Their bold plan. 

to determine what plan to adopt for finally ac- 
complishing their end. It was agreed that 
Caesar must be slain ; but the time, the place, 
and the manner in which the deed should be 
performed were all yet undecided. Various 
plans were proposed in the consultations which 
the conspirators held ; but there was one thing 
peculiar to them all, which was, that they did 
not any of them contemplate or provide for any 
thing like secrecy in the commission of the 
deed. It was to be performed in the most open 
and public manner. "With a stern and un- 
daunted boldness, which has always been con- 
sidered by mankind as truly sublime, they de- 
termined that, in respect to the actual execution 
itself of the solemn judgment which they had 
pronounced, there should be nothing private or 
concealed. They thought over the various pub- 
lic situations in which they might find Csesar, 
and where they might strike him down, only to 
select the one which would be most public of 
all. They kept, of course, their preliminary 
counsels private, to prevent the adoption of 
measures for counteracting them ; but they 
were to perform the deed in such a manner as 
that, so soon as it was performed, they should 
stand out to view, exposed fully to the gaze of 



254 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 44. 

Final arrangements. The place and the day. 

all mankind as the authors of it. They plan- 
ned no retreat, no concealment, no protection 
whatever for themselves, seeming to feel that 
the deed which they were about to perform, of 
destroying the master and monarch of the world, 
was a deed in its own nature so grand and sub- 
lime as to raise the perpetrators of it entirely 
above all considerations relating to their own 
personal safety. Their plan, therefore, was to 
keep their consultations and arrangements se- 
cret until they were prepared to strike the blow, 
then to strike it in the most public and impos- 
ing manner possible, and calmly afterward to 
await the consequences. 

In this view of the subject, they decided that 
the chamber of the Roman Senate was the prop- 
er place, and the Ides of March, the day on which 
he was appointed to be crowned, was the proper 
time for Caesar to be slain. 



B.C. 44.] The Assassination. 255 

Caesar receives many warnings of his approaching fate. 



Chapter XII. 
The Assassination. 

ACCORDING to the account given by his 
historians, Csesar received many warn- 
ings of his approaching fate, which, however, he 
would not heed. Many of these warnings were 
strange portents and prodigies, which the philo- 
sophical writers who recorded them half believed 
themselves, and w^hich they were always ready 
to add to their narratives even if they did not 
believe them, on account of the great influence 
which such an introduction of the supernatural 
and the divine had with readers in those days in 
enhancing the dignity and the dramatic interest 
of the story. These warnings were as follows : 
At Capua, which was a great city at some 
distance south of Rome, the second, in fact, in 
Italy, and the one which Hannibal had proposed 
to make his capital, some workmen were re- 
moving certain ancient sepulchers to make room 
for the foundations of a splendid edifice which, 
among his other plans for the embellishment of 
the cities of Italy, Caesar was intending to have 



256 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

The tomb and inscription. Caesar's horses. 

erected there. As the excavations advanced, 
the workmen came at last to an ancient tomb, 
which proved to be that of the original founder 
of Capua ; and, in bringing out the sarcophagus, 
they found an inscription, worked upon a brass 
plate, and in the Greek character, predicting 
that if those remains were ever disturbed, a 
great member of the Julian family would be 
assassinated by his own friends, and his death 
would be followed by extended devastations 
throughout all Italy. 

The horses, too, with which Caesar had passed 
the Rubicon, and which had been, ever since 
that time, living in honorable retirement in a 
splendid park which Caesar had provided for 
them, by some mysterious instinct, or from 
some divine communication, had warning of the 
approach of their great benefactor's end. They 
refused their food, and walked about with melan- 
choly and dejected looks, mourning apparently, 
and in a manner almost human, some impend- 
ing grief. 

There was a class of prophets in those days 
called by a name which has been translated 
soothsayers. These soothsayers were able, as 
was supposed, to look somewhat into futurity — 
dimly and doubtfully, it is true, but really, by 



B.C. 44.] The Assassination. 257 

The soothsayers. The hawks and the wren. 

means of certain appearances exhibited by the 
bodies of the animals offered in sacrifices. 
These soothsayers were consulted on all im- 
portant occasions ; and if the auspices proved 
unfavorable when any great enterprise was 
about to be undertaken, it was often, on that 
account, abandoned or postponed. One of these 
soothsayers, named Spurinna, came to Caesar 
one day, and informed him that he had found, 
by means of a public sacrifice which he had just 
been offering, that there was a great and mys- 
terious danger impending over him, which was 
connected in some way with the Ides of March, 
and he counseled him to be particularly cautious 
and circumspect until that day should have 
passed. 

The Senate were to meet on the Ides of 
March in a new and splendid edifice, which had 
been erected for their use by Pompey. There 
was in the interior of the building, among other 
decorations, a statue of Pompey. The day be- 
fore the Ides of March, some birds of prey from 
a neighboring grove came flying into this hall, 
pursuing a little wren with a sprig of laurel in 
its mouth. The birds tore the wren to pieces, 
the laurel dropping from its bill to the marble 
pavement of the floor below. Now, as Caesar 

R 



258 Julius Cjesar. [B.C. 44. 

Csesar's agitation of mind. His dream. 

had been always accustomed to wear a crown 
of laurel on great occasions, and had always 
evinced a particular fondness for that decoration, 
the laurel had come to be considered his own 
proper badge, and the fall of the laurel, there- 
fore, was naturally thought to portend some 
great calamity to him. 

The night before the Ides of March Csesar 
could not sleep. It would not seem, however, 
to be necessary to suppose any thing super- 
natural to account for his wakefulness. He lay 
upon his bed restless and excited, or if he fell 
into a momentary slumber, his thoughts, in- 
stead of finding repose, were only plunged into 
greater agitations, produced by strange, and, as 
he thought, supernatural dreams. He imagined 
that he ascended into the skies, and was received 
there by Jupiter, the supreme divinity, as an 
associate and equal. While shaking hands with 
the great father of gods and men, the sleeper 
was startled by a frightful sound. He awoke, 
and found his wife Calpurnia groaning and 
struggling in her sleep. He saw her by the 
moonlight which was shining into the room. 
He spoke to her, and aroused her. After staring 
wildly for a moment till she had recovered her 
thoughts, she said that she had had a dreadful 



B.C. 44.] The Assassination. 259 

Calpurnia's dream. The effect of a disturbed mind. 

dream. She had dreamed that the roof of the 
house had fallen in, and that, at the same in- 
stant, the doors had been burst open, and some 
robber or assassin had stabbed her husband as 
he was lying in her arms. The philosophy of 
those days found in these dreams mysterious 
and preternatural warnings of impending dan- 
ger ; that of ours, however, sees nothing ei- 
ther in the absurd sacrilegiousness of Csesar's 
thoughts, or his wife's incoherent and incon- 
sistent images of terror — nothing more than 
the natural and proper effects, on the one hand, 
of the insatiable ambition of man, and, on the 
other, of the conjugal affection and solicitude 
of woman. The ancient sculptors carved out 
images of men, by the forms and lineaments of 
which we see that the physical characteristics 
of humanity have not changed. History seems 
to do the same with the affections and passions 
of the soul. The dreams of Csesar and his wife 
on the night before the Ides of March, as thus 
recorded, form a sort of spiritual statue, which 
remains from generation to generation, to show 
us how precisely all the inward workings of hu- 
man nature are from age to age the same. 

When the morning came Caesar and Calpur- 
nia arose, both restless and ill at ease. Coesar 



260 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

Ceesar hesitates. Decimus Brutus. 

ordered the auspices to be consulted with refer- 
ence to the intended proceedings of the day. 
The soothsay ois came in in due time, and re- 
ported that the result was unfavorable. Cal- 
purnia, too, earnestly entreated her husband not 
to go to the senate-house that day. She had 
a very strong presentiment that, if he did go, 
some great calamity would ensue. Caesar him- 
self hesitated. He was half inclined to yield, 
and postpone his coronation to another occasion. 

In the course of the day, while Caesar was in 
this state of doubt and uncertainty, one of the 
conspirators, named Decimus Brutus, came in. 
This Brutus was not a man of any extraordi- 
nary courage or energy, but he had been invited 
by the other conspirators to join them, on ac- 
count of his having under his charge a large 
number of gladiators, who, being desperate and 
reckless men, would constitute a very suitable 
armed force for them to call in to their aid in 
case of any emergency arising which should re- 
quire it. 

The conspirators having thus all their plans 
arranged, Decimus Brutus was commissioned 
to call at Caesar's house when the time ap- 
proached for the assembling of the Senate, both 
to avert suspicion from Caesar's mind, and to 



B.C. 44.] The Assassination. 261 

Decimus Brutus waits upon Caesar. He persuades him to go. 

assure himself that nothing had been discovered. 
It was in the afternoon, the time for the meet* 
ing of the senators having been fixed at five 
o'clock. Decimus Brutus found Csesar troubled 
and perplexed, and uncertain what to do. After 
hearing what he had to say, he replied by urg- 
ing him to go by all means to a the senate-house, 
as he had intended. " You have formally called 
the Senate together," said he, " and they are 
now assembling. They are all prepared to con- 
fer upon you the rank and title of king, not only 
in Parthia, while you are conducting this war, 
but every where, by sea and land, except in 
Italy. And now, while they are all in their 
places, waiting to consummate the great act, 
how absurd will it be for you to send them word 
to go home again, and come back some other 
day, when Calpurnia shall have had better 
dreams !•" 

He urged, too, that, even if Caesar was de- 
termined to put off the action of the Senate to 
another day, he was imperiously bound to go 
himself and adjourn the session in person. So 
saying, he took the hesitating potentate by the 
arm, and adding to his arguments a little gen- 
tle force, conducted him along. 

The conspirators supposed that all was safe. 



262 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 44. 

Artemidorus discovers the plot. He warns Csesar. 

The fact was, however, that all had been dis- 
covered. There was a certain Greek, a teacher 
of oratory, named Artemidorus. He had con- 
trived to learn something of the plot from some 
of the conspirators who were his pupils. He 
wrote a brief statement of the leading particu- 
lars, and, having no other mode of access to 
Caesar, he determined to hand it to him on the 
way as he went to the senate-house. Of course, 
the occasion w T as one of great public interest, 
and crowds had assembled in the streets to see 
the great conqueror as he went along. As 
usual at such times, when powerful officers of 
state appear in public, many people came up 
to present petitions to him as he passed. These 
he received, and handed them, without reading, 
to his secretary who attended him, as if to have 
them preserved for future examination. Ar- 
temidorus, who was waiting for his opportunity, 
when he perceived what disposition Caesar made 
of the papers which were given to him, began 
to be afraid that his own communication would 
not be attended to until it was too late. He 
accordingly pressed up near to Caesar, refusing 
to allow any one else to pass the paper in ; and 
when, at last, he obtained an opportunity, he 
gave it directly into Caesar's hands, saying to 



B.C. 44.] The Assassination. 263 

Caesar and Spurinna. Caesar arrives at the senate-house. 

him, " Read this immediately : it concerns your- 
self, and is of the utmost importance." 

Csesar took the paper and attempted to read 
it, but new petitions and other interruptions 
constantly prevented him ; finally he gave up 
the attempt, and went on his way, receiving and 
passing to his secretary all other papers, but re- 
taining this paper of Artemidorus in his hand. 

Caesar passed Spurinna on his way to the 
senate-house — the soothsayer who had predict- 
ed some great danger connected with the Ides 
of March. As soon as he recognized him, he 
accosted him with the words, " Well, Spurinna, 
the Ides of March have come, and I am safe." 
" Yes," replied Spurinna, "they have come, but 
they are not yet over." 

At length he arrived at the senate-house, with 
the paper of Artemidorus still unread in his 
hand. The senators were all convened, the 
leading conspirators among them. They all 
rose to receive Csesar as he entered. Ctesar 
advanced to the seat provided for him, and, when 
he was seated, the senators themselves sat down. 
The moment had now arrived, and the conspir- 
ators, with pale looks and beating hearts, felt 
that now or never the deed was to be done. 

It requires a very considerable degree of phys- 



264 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

Resolution of the Conspirators. Csesar aDd Poiripey's statue. 

ical courage and hardihood for men to come to 
a calm, and deliberate decision that they will 
kill one whom they hate, and, still more, actu- 
ally to strike the blow, even when under the 
immediate impulse of passion. But men who 
are perfectly capable of either of these often find 
their resolution fail them as the time comes for 
striking a dagger into the living flesh of their 
victim, when he sits at ease and unconcerned 
before them, unarmed and defenseless, and doing 
nothing to excite those feelings of irritation and 
anger which are generally found so necessary to 
nerve the human arm to such deeds. Utter de- 
fense-lessness is accordingly, sometimes, a great- 
er protection than an armor of steel. 

Even Cassius himself, the originator and the 
soul of the whole enterprise, found his courage 
hardly adequate to the work now that the mo- 
ment had arrived ; and, in order to arouse the 
necessary excitement in his soul, he looked up 
to the statue of Pompey, Csesar's ancient and 
most formidable enemy, and invoked its aid. 
It gave him its aid. It inspired him with some 
portion of the enmity with which the soul of 
its great original had burned ; and thus the soul 
of the living assassin was nerved to its work by 
a sort of sympathy with a block of stone. 



B.Q44.] The Assassination. 265 

Plan of the conspirators. Marc Antony. 

Foreseeing the necessity of something like a 
stimulus to action when the immediate moment 
for action should arrive, the conspirators had 
agreed that, as soon as Csesar was seated, they 
would approach him with a petition, which he 
would probably refuse, and then, gathering 
around him, they would urge him with their 
importunities, so as to produce, in the confusion, 
a sort of excitement that would make it easier 
for them to strike the blow. 

There was one person, a relative and friend of 
Caesar's, named Marcus Antonius, called com- 
monly, however, in English narratives, Marc 
Antony, the same who has been already men- 
tioned as having been subsequently connected 
with Cleopatra. He was a very energetic and 
determined man, who, they thought, might pos- 
sibly attempt to defend him. To prevent this, 
one of the conspirators had been designated to 
take him aside, and occupy his attention with 
some pretended subject of discourse, ready, at 
the same time, to resist and prevent his inter- 
ference if he should show himself inclined to 
offer any. 

Things being thus arranged, the petitioner, 
as had been agreed, advanced to Coesar with his 
petition, others coming up at the same time as 



266 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

The petition. Caesar assaulted. He resists. 

if to second the request. The object of the pe- 
tition was to ask for the pardon of the brother 
of one of the conspirators. Caesar declined 
granting it. The others then crowded around 
him, urging him to grant the request with press- 
ing importunities, all apparently reluctant to 
strike the first blow. Caesar began to be alarm- 
ed, and attempted to repel them. One of them 
then pulled down his robe from his neck to lay 
it bare. Caesar arose, exclaiming, " But this 
is violence." At the same instant, one of the 
conspirators struck at him with his sword, and 
wounded him slightly in the neck. 

All was now terror, outcry, and confusion. 
Caesar had no time to draw his sword, but 
fought a moment with his style, a sharp in- 
strument of iron with which they wrote, in 
those days, on waxen tablets, and which he 
happened then to have in his hand. With this 
instrument he ran one of his enemies through 
the arm. 

This resistance was just what was necessary 
to excite the conspirators, and give them the 
requisite resolution to finish their work. Caesar 
soon saw the swords, accordingly, gleaming all 
around him, and thrusting themselves at him 
on every side. The senators rose in confusion 



B.C. 44] The Assassination. 



267 



Caesar is overcome. 



Pompey's statue. 



and dismay, perfectly thunderstruck at the 
scene, and not knowing what to do. Antony 
perceived that all resistance on his part would 
be unavailing, and accordingly did not attempt 
any. Caesar defended himself alone for a few 
minutes as well as he could, looking all around 
him in vain for help, and retreating at the same 
time toward the pedestal of Pompey's statue. 
At length, when he saw Brutus among his mur- 
derers, he exclaimed, " And you too, Brutus?" 
and seemed from that moment to give up in 
despair. i/He drew his robe over his face, and 




Pompey's Statue. 



268 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

Caesar's death. Flight of the senators. Great commotion. 

soon fell under the wounds which he received. 
His blood ran out upon the pavement at the 
foot of Pompey's statue, as if his death were a 
sacrifice offered to appease his ancient enemy's 
revenge, j 

In the midst of the scene Brutus made an 
attempt to address the senators, and to vindi- 
cate what they had done, but the confusion and 
excitement were so great that it was impossible 
that any thing could be heard. The senators 
were, in fact, rapidly leaving the place, going 
off in every direction, and spreading the tidings 
over the city. The event, of course, produced 
universal commotion. The citizens began to 
close their shops, and some to barricade their 
houses, while others hurried to and fro about the 
streets, anxiously inquiring for intelligence, and 
wondering what dreadful event was next to 
be expected. Antony and Lepidus, who were 
Caesar's two most faithful and influential friends, 
not knowing how extensive the conspiracy might 
be, nor how far the hostility to Caesar and his 
party might extend, fled, and, not daring to go 
to their own houses, lest the assassins or their 
confederates might pursue them there, sought 
concealment in the houses of friends on whom 
they supposed they could rely, and who were 
willing to receive them. 



B.C. 44.] The Assassination. 269 

The conspirators proceed to the Capitol. They glory in their deed. 

In the mean time, the conspirators, glorying 
in the deed which they had perpetrated, and 
congratulating each other on the successful 
issue of their enterprise, sallied forth together 
from the senate-house, leaving the body of their 
victim weltering in its blood, and marched, with 
drawn swords in their hands, along the streets 
from the senate-house to the Capitol. Brutus 
went at the head of them, preceded by a liberty 
cap borne upon the point of a spear, and with 
his bloody dagger in his hand. The Capitol 
was the citadel, built magnificently upon the 
Capitoline Hill, and surrounded by temples, and 
other sacred and civil edifices, which made the 
spot the architectural wonder of the world. As 
Brutus and his company proceeded thither, they 
announced to the citizens, as they went along, 
the great deed of deliverance which they had 
wrought out for the country. Instead of seek- 
ing concealment, they gloried in the work which 
they had done, and they so far succeeded in in- 
spiring others with a portion of their enthusi- 
asm, that some men who had really taken no 
part in the deed joined Brutus and his company 
in their march, to obtain by stealth a share in 
the glory. 

The body of Csesar lay for some time un- 



270 Julius C^sar. [B.C. 44. 

Number of Caesar's wounds. His slaves convey his body home. 

heeded where it had fallen, the attention of 
every one being turned to the excitement, which 
was extending through the city, and to the ex- 
pectation of other great events which might sud- 
denly develop themselves in other quarters of 
Rome. There were left only three of Caesar's 
slaves, who gathered around the body to look at 
the wounds. They counted them, and found 
the number twenty-three. It shows, however, 
how strikingly, and with what reluctance, the 
actors in this tragedy came up to their work at 
last, that of all these twenty-three wounds only 
one was a mortal one. In fact, it is probable 
that, while all of the conspirators struck the 
victim in their turn, to fulfill the pledge which 
they had given to one another that they would 
every one inflict a wound, each one hoped that 
the fatal blow would be given, after all, by some 
other hand than his own. 

At last the slaves decided to convey the 
body home. They obtained a sort of chair, 
which was made to be borne by poles, and 
placed the body upon it. Then, lifting at the 
three handles, and allowing the fourth to hang 
unsupported for want of a man, they bore the 
ghastly remains home to the distracted Calpur- 
nia. 



B.C. 44] The Assassination. 271 

Address of the conspirators. Feelings of the populace. 

The next day Brutus and his associates called 
an assembly of the people in the Forum, and 
made an address to them, explaining the mo- 
tives which had led them to the commission of 
the deed, and vindicating the necessity and the 
justice of it. The people received these expla- 
nations in silence. They expressed neither ap- 
probation nor displeasure. It was not, in fact, 
to be expected that they would feel or evince 
any satisfaction at the loss of their master. He 
had been their champion, and, as they believed, 
their friend. The removal of Csesar brought 
no accession of power nor increase of liberty to 
them. It might have been a gain to ambitious 
senators, or powerful generals, or high officers 
of state, by removing a successful rival out of 
their way, but it seemed to promise little ad- 
vantage to the community at large, other than 
the changing of one despotism for another. Be- 
sides, a populace who know that they must be 
governed, prefer generally, if they must sub- 
mit to some control, to yield their submission 
to some one master spirit whom they can look 
up to as a great and acknowledged superior. 
They had rather have a Caesar than a Senate 
to command them. 

The higher authorities, however, were, as 



272 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 44. 

Caesar's will. Its provisions. 

might have been expected, disposed to acqui- 
esce in the removal of Caesar from his intended 
throne. The Senate met, and passed an act of 
indemnity, to shield the conspirators from all 
legal liability for the deed they had done. In 
order, however, to satisfy the people too, as far 
as possible, they decreed divine honors to Caesar, 
confirmed and ratified all that he had done while 
in the exercise of supreme power, and appointed 
a time for the funeral, ordering arrangements 
to be made for a very pompous celebration of it. 
A will was soon found, which Caesar, it seems, 
had made some time before. Calpurnia's father 
proposed that this will should be opened and 
read in public at Antony's house ; and this was 
accordingly done. The provisions of the will 
were, many of them, of such a character as re- 
newed the feelings of interest and sympathy 
which the people of Rome had begun to cherish 
for Caesar's memory. His vast estate was di- 
vided chiefly among the children of his sister, 
as he had no children of his own, while the 
very men who had been most prominent in 
his assassination were named as trustees and 
guardians of the property ; and one of them, 
Decimus Brutus, the one who had been so ur- 
gent to conduct him to the senate-house, was a 



B.C. 44] The Assassination. 273 

Preparations for Caesar's funeral. The Field of Mars. 

second heir. He had some splendid gardens 
near the Tiber, which he bequeathed to the cit- 
izens of Rome, and a large amount of money 
also, to be divided among them, sufficient to 
give every man a considerable sum. 

The time for the celebration of the funeral 
ceremonies was made known by proclamation, 
and, as the concourse of strangers and citizens 
of Rome was likely to be so great as to forbid 
the forming of all into one procession without 
consuming more than one day, the various class- 
es of the community were invited to come, each 
in their own way, to the Field of Mars, bringing 
with them such insignia, offerings, and obla- 
tions as they pleased. The Field of Mars was 
an immense parade ground, reserved for mili- 
tary reviews, spectacles, and shows. A funeral 
pile was erected here for the burning of the body. 
There was to be a funeral discourse pronounced, 
and Marc Antony had been designated to per- 
form this duty. The body had been placed in 
a gilded bed, under a magnificent canopy in the 
form of a temple, before the rostra where the 
funeral discourse was to be pronounced. The 
bed was covered with scarlet and cloth of gold, 
and at the head of it was laid the robe in which 
CsBsar had been slain. It was stained with 

R 



274 Julius Caesar. [B.C. 44. 

Marc Antony's oration. The funeral pile. 

blood, and pierced with the holes that the swords 
and daggers of the conspirators had made. 

Marc Antony, instead of pronouncing a for- 
mal panegyric upon his deceased friend, ordered 
a crier to read the decrees of the Senate, in 
which all honors, human and divine, had been 
ascribed to Caesar. He then added a few words 
of his own. The bed was then taken up, with 
the body upon it, and borne out into the Forum, 
preparatory to conveying it to the pile which 
had been prepared for it upon the Field of Mars. 
A question, however, here arose among the 
multitude assembled in respect to the proper 
place for burning the body. The people seemed 
inclined to select the most honorable place which 
could be found within the limits of the city. 
Some proposed a beautiful temple on the Capi- 
toline Hill. Others wished to take it to the 
senate-house, where he had been slain. The 
Senate, and those who were less inclined to pay 
extravagant honors to the departed hero, were 
in favor of some more retired spot, under pre- 
tense that the buildings of the city would be en- 
dangered by the fire. This discussion was fast 
becoming a dispute, when it was suddenly ended 
by two men, with swords at their sides and 
lances in their hands, forcing their way through 



B.C. 44.] The Assassination. 277 

The body burned in the Forum. The conflagration. 

the crowd with lignted torches, and setting the 
bed and its canopy on fire where it lay. 

This settled the question, and the whole com- 
pany were soon in the wildest excitement with 
the work of building up a funeral pile upon the 
spot. At first they brought fagots and threw 
upon the fire, then benches from the neighbor- 
ing courts and porticoes, and then any thing 
combustible which came to hand. The honor 
done to the memory of a deceased hero was, in 
some sense, in proportion to the greatness of his 
funeral pile, and all the populace on this oc- 
casion began soon to seize every thing they 
could find, appropriate and unappropriate, pro- 
vided that it would increase the flame. The 
soldiers threw on their lances and spears, the 
musicians their instruments, and others stripped 
off the cloths and trappings from the furniture 
of the procession, and heaped them upon the 
burning pile. 

So fierce and extensive was the fire, that it 
spread to some of the neighboring houses, and 
required great efforts to prevent a general con- 
flagration. The people, too, became greatly ex- 
cited by the scene. They lighted torches by the 
fire, and went to the houses of Brutus and Cas- 
sius, threatening vengeance upon them for the 



278 Julius Cesar. [B.C. 44. 

Caesars monument. The comet. 

murder of Csesar. The authorities succeeded, 
though with infinite difficulty, in protecting 
Brutus and Cassius from the violence of the 
mob, but they seized one unfortunate citizen 
of the name of Cinna, thinking it a certain 
Cinna who had been known as an enemy of 
Caesar. They cut off his head, notwithstanding 
his shrieks and cries, and carried it about the 
city on the tip of a pike, a dreadful symbol of 
their hostility to the enemies of Caesar. As 
frequently happens, however, in such deeds -of 
sudden violence, these hasty and lawless aven- 
gers found afterward that they had made a 
mistake, and beheaded the wrong man. 

The Roman people erected a column to the 
memory of Csesar, on which they placed the in- 
scription, " To the Father of^his Country." 
They fixed the figure of a star upon the summit 
of it, and some time afterward, while the people 
were celebrating some games in honor of his 
memory, a great comet blazed for seven nights 
in the sky, which they recognized as the mighty 
hero's soul reposing in heaven. 



The End. 



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